


Maintenant

by kaijuvenom



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Jewish Deceit Sanders, No I have not watched an episode of sanders sides in over a year and no i will not be doing that, Other, Past Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Deceit Sanders, Pre-Relationship, Recreational Drug Use, Roman Being An Idiot, Trans Deceit Sanders, as a treat, deceit has a name?, huh?, i sure didnt, it's marajawana, snakes can have little a marajawana, whats that you say?, yall hear summ?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:42:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 40,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24317494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaijuvenom/pseuds/kaijuvenom
Summary: Virgil left Deceit without any warning, not even a goodbye. How is she supposed to move on, even after he left her so long ago? She loved him, and apparently Virgil can act like he never even knew her. Deceit had been keeping those feelings trapped in for so long, and they come tumbling out--in the form of ducking out. No one even notices for weeks, but eventually, someone comes along to help pick up the pieces.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Deceit Sanders, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders/Deceit Sanders
Comments: 42
Kudos: 49





	1. One Woman Show

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucernis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucernis/gifts).



> Vesper I love yoooouuuuuu and to show my love I give you roceit content. Because you put the Sanders worms in brain so I'm blaming you for this. All your fault. Terrible. I can't believe you physically made my write three thousand words and plan out an entire fic. I can't believe you've done this.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I was unhappy long before the night I watched you walk out the door. For I remember fall days, I recall them all. When the wind, it whispered. I was so in love with you, and now none of these things will do at all. So what are you going to do to make me blue, now that I’m bluer than I’ve ever known?_

“I waited for you. I waited for you for so long, I thought you’d come back. I thought I meant something to you. Everything we did together, everything we said, and you pretend you don’t know me? Was I really nothing? So easily tossed away? I thought you were the one who’s supposed to care what other people think of you. It seems like you care about everyone but me. You worry about people’s perceptions of you and the way you should act around them, but what, _what,_ am I not _good enough_ for you to give a second thought to? Am I not important enough to you that you’re not terrified of losing me like you are of everything else? All those _fucking_ years we spent together, protecting each other, you _told me you loved me_... and they call _me_ Deceit. You lied to me and you didn’t even have the decency to say goodbye. 

Virgil, you _vanished, you left me alone, and I was so scared._ I was so scared, Virgil, and I didn’t know if you’d been hurt, or kidnapped, or you were lost or in pain and I spent weeks looking for you. I went into your room and it was empty. It was _empty_ and _I thought you’d fucking died, that you’d vanished out of existence._

And you know what I finally found?

No, you do. You know what I found. Don’t act like you feel bad about it now because you sure as _hell didn’t give a damn about my feelings then._ I was tearing the world apart, tearing _myself_ apart, trying to figure out what had happened to you. And you were right there the whole time, on the other side of the hall. Making friends. Laughing. They knew your _name,_ they _appreciated_ _you, and fuck.”_

There was a pause, a shuddering of a breath, a hand reaching forward to offer comfort, smacked away before it could get too close. 

“That _broke me,_ Virgil. I know things weren’t perfect here, I know it wasn’t safe, I know the dark sides were cruel, and I don’t blame you for wanting to leave. But you left me. You left me here without a word, without a hint, without _anything_ and,” there was another long pause, “You know what?” She shrugged, turning away. “It doesn’t matter in the end, does it? You did what you did, and I can either choose to accept it or scream at you until you tell me why you don’t give a shit about me. And I’m of the opinion that you shouldn’t waste your time pleading for closure from people who don’t give a rat’s ass about you.”

“Dee, I-” Virgil’s hand extended again, hovering above her shoulder before pulling back again, hesitant, reluctant. 

“ _Don’t. Don’t._ Fucking call me that. Leave, why don’t you? You’re good at that.”

Virgil was close to saying something, whether to apologize, argue, to start a fight, defend himself, provide comfort. There were so many options. Almost all of them better than actually doing what Deceit had told him to do, but he did it anyway, turning around and leaving Dee’s room, eyes downcast, quietly shutting the door behind him as he made his way down the hallway and back to the other side of the house. 

“Did you talk to him?” Roman’s voice made Virgil jump, and he frowned for a second.

“...Who?” 

“Uh… Deceit? Who you went down the hall to talk to because we decided you were the best one to do it? Hello?”

“Oh.” It took Virgil a little too long for his brain to remember that Deceit had never bothered to tell the other sides her pronouns and gender. Or maybe she had and they’d assumed she’d meant the opposite, or been lying to confuse them. 

“It’s um, she or they. Not he. Dee’s a girl. So… that could be one reason she’s avoiding all of you,” Virgil responded, crossing his arms, a lot more defensively than he’d intended. Maybe he was projecting a little, because that definitely wasn’t the reason Dee had been refusing to participate even when she’d been summoned lately. 

“Oh.” Roman looked like he might question how that was possible for a second, but then he shrugged. “Well, did you talk to her, then?” 

“No,” Virgil answered shortly. “She didn’t want to talk to me. And I’d rather not talk about it. So-” And like that, he was gone, likely off to his room again. 

And Roman was alone in the living room. Well, he supposed, he could (and likely should) admit defeat. But Roman wasn’t one to give up, was he? Of course not. Especially not to someone like Deceit. Even if giving up would technically be a win for him, considering how he wasn’t supposed to like her anyway. But now it was a challenge, so he couldn’t very well let it go. 

So there he was, crossing the border between the light sides and the dark sides’ part of the house, walking down the dark hallway, and stopping right in front of what he could only assume was Deceit’s door, seeing as it was yellow with a black, snake-shaped handle. He took a deep breath. He could do this. Deceit liked him, right? At least, she seemed nicer to Roman than she was to Virgil, and that had to count for something, right? Hopefully. If he got constricted and eaten by a giant snake (whether the snake was Deceit herself or one of her pets), at least he would’ve made a valiant attempt. So he knocked on the door. 

“I told you to leave.” The voice was clearly Deceit’s, but without a single flash of her usual tone, none of the dramatic flair or fire. That wasn’t right at all. She simply sounded exhausted. 

“It’s um, It’s not Virgil.” Roman wasn’t sure what else to say, so he left it at that. 

There was silence for a few seconds, as if Deceit were weighing the pros and cons of opening the door, before it was finally opened, and it seemed as if the definitely-not-Deceit-like tone that Roman had heard through the door was completely gone, because the Deceit who opened the door was most certainly the normal, dramatic looking, Deceit. 

“Well, Not-Virgil, why don’t you come in? I can’t leave Not-Virgil standing outside my doorway. That would be horribly rude of me.” She gave Roman a wide, uneven smile, fangs poking out of her mouth. 

Roman hesitated, briefly wondering if this was a terrible idea, because he was only now realizing Deceit had fangs, like real, _actual_ , snake fangs, and Roman had been under the impression it had all been for show. Not that he’d felt there was anything wrong with that, he’d actually been excited to have something in common with another side (a flair for the dramatics and all that). But he’d thought it was all for the aesthetic. He was sure Logan would have a field day if he found out. Best not to tell him, then. 

As soon as he stepped inside Deceit’s room, she shut the door behind him, although Roman didn’t feel threatened by it. Deceit’s room was actually quite nice. There were jungle plants everywhere, flowers that looked bizarre and potentially dangerous, giant leaves, vines dangling from the ceilings, and _wow_ , there were a lot of snakes. There were two or three piled up together on a large rock in the middle of what looked like a sand pit, which probably also had sleeping snakes in it, some were resting on the thick vines and branches, and one particularly huge snake was sprawled across the entirety of Deceit’s bed. 

“Wow,” was really all Roman was capable of saying as he glanced around, eyes wide in fascination. “It’s beautiful in here.” He looked back at Deceit and smiled at her. 

“It-” She paused, tilting her head, then shrugging. “I suppose. I don’t get many guests.”

“The last one would be Virgil, I guess,” Roman offered, and the look of shock on Deceit’s face at that statement only caused him confusion. 

“How did you know- did- did he tell you?” The sudden hurt in Deceit’s tone was also causing confusion. Had Roman said something wrong? Virgil had told him he was going to see Deceit after being talked into it by him and Logan, it hadn’t been a secret or anything. 

“Um. Yes?” Roman tried, feeling like that was the wrong answer. 

It definitely was, because Deceit immediately covered her face, ducking away from Roman to sit on the edge of her bed, facing away from him. “Why would he tell you that? Why would he-” She sounded like she was crying. Roman really felt he was missing some very important piece of whatever it was that was going on because he couldn’t comprehend why on Earth Deceit would consider it such a horrible betrayal of some sort for Virgil to tell Roman he was going to look for Deceit after she’d been completely off the map for over a month. 

“Um…” Roman walked towards her, sitting next to her on the bed, then scooting a little further away in case she suddenly snapped at him (maybe he shouldn’t be treating Dee like a wild animal, but then again, she did have scales and fangs, so he wasn’t really sure). “I’m sorry. I don’t really understand what’s going on, not with you and Virgil, or with… you in general, but I wanted to come and see if there was anything I can do to help.” 

“Yeah, you can forget whatever it is he told you, because whatever it is, it _isn’t true,_ I loved him, I never would’ve left him, and I know you won’t believe me like _everyone else,_ like _him_ , so leave me alone. I don’t want any sort of lecture from you, telling me to stay away from him, or--or whatever it is you have to say-”

“Deceit.” Roman broke Dee off her rant with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I… have literally no idea what you’re talking about. All Virgil told me was that he was going to check on you because Logan and I thought another.... ah… side like you… might be able to talk to you more easily. And navigate this side of the house.”

“Oh.” Their expression cleared and they stood up, wiping the tear tracks off their cheek. Roman found the fact that she only seemed to cry from one of her eyes, the human one, very fascinating. Aside from the fact that she was crying, which was not fascinating and actually highly concerning and most definitely not an ideal way to start a conversation. “Well, in that case, forget I said anything. It isn’t important.”

“I mean. Clearly it is. You, um, you said you… well you implied that, that you and Virgil, ah, you were, close?” Roman was the romantic side and yet he still found himself incapable of saying the word ‘love’ in reference to Deceit. Or maybe Virgil. He simply couldn’t picture the words _love_ and _Virgil_ existing in the same sentence.

“What? No, of course not, that was,” there was a long pause as Deceit swallowed, seemingly attempting to come up with something that would get her out of this, “I was speaking metaphorically.”

Roman blinked, tilting his head. Now maybe he wasn’t entirely sure what a meta is for, but he was willing to bet it wasn’t that. “If you don’t mind me asking, Deceit, how exactly do you _metaphorically_ love someone?” 

“Well, see, what I meant was,” Once again, Deceit started off sounding confident, as if Roman’s question had been incredibly foolish because it was _so_ obvious, _duh,_ Roman, how could you not understand her? And then it immediately fell to pieces when she couldn’t seem to think of a way to finish her thought. 

“He left,” she said. She sat back down on the bed, away from Roman, refusing to look at him. 

“He, meaning-”

“Virgil, of course, who the hell else would I be talking about?” She snapped, and a hint of a hiss accentuated her words, causing Roman to scoot a little further away. 

“I’m assuming you aren’t referring to when he left your room earlier.” Very observant of you, Roman, you are so good at understanding things and providing emotional support. 

“He left to be with you.”

“With-” Roman pointed at himself, squinting, as Deceit turned to look at him, and then proceeded to roll her eyes so hard Roman thought back to the time Patton had told him that if he rolled his eyes too much, they’d get stuck in the back of his head.

“ _You_ , as in the general _you,_ the other main sides, you egomaniac.”

“Oh. Right. I knew that.” 

“Brushing past the fact that you clearly didn’t, why the hell do you even care? I thought you all decided I was bad, or whatever. Why are you here?” 

“I never decided you were bad,” Roman rushed to defend himself, frowning. “I’ve always liked you.” Where had that come from? Roman had most certainly not always liked Deceit, in fact, he hadn’t even given her much thought in the grand scheme of things, but now here he was, wondering how he got here, but still fully meaning what he was saying. He did like Deceit. Now, in this moment, at least. Or perhaps he only felt sympathetic to her. Either way, whatever the reason, he wasn’t going to think about it too long (Deceit was supposed to be the villain in his story, after all). 

Deceit didn’t seem particularly interested in that statement, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. I’ve never cared about all of your opinions of me before, so why should I now? Let Virgil say what he needs to, do what he wants, leave me the hell alone.” 

Roman was a terribly stubborn person, so that was exactly the opposite of what he did. “Why did Virgil leave you?” He asked after a few seconds, bracing himself to get yelled at again.

He did not, in fact. “I don’t know,” Deceit responded, curling her body up on her bed in a way that shouldn’t really be humanly possible. “We practically grew up together. I loved him. All I wanted was for him to be safe. All those times all of you made him feel unwanted, excluded, even after he _kept trying_ and you kept rejecting him, _I_ was there for him. But I wasn’t fucking good enough for him, I guess. Because as soon as he got a new hoodie and some friendly smiles he was _gone_ without even saying goodbye. Not even a damn note.” 

“When you say you loved him…”

“Jesus Christ, Roman, we were dating, we were together, is that _really_ all you’re getting from this?”

“It’s…” Roman trailed off, trying to articulate exactly what he was trying to say before deciding it was probably better off unsaid.

"What, you don’t think I’m good enough for him? Because it’s not like it should concern you anymore.” 

“No, it’s, um, actually I was thinking the opposite.” Had he said that out loud? Apparently. That hadn’t been intentional. “Not that I don’t like Virgil.He’s-- I mean, I only meant that I think you’re equally good. As a person. You know?” 

Deceit uncurled herself from her inhuman ball and finally turned to look at him, with the barest hint of a genuine (at least, Roman hoped it was genuine) smile on her face. “You’re strange, Roman. And not because I don’t think you know what you’re saying most of the time. Although that is a contributing factor,” they added after a second. 

“Umm… thank you?” Roman had no idea whether that was an insult or not, but he was trying a new thing where he attempted to see the best in people (Deceit). “Does that mean you don’t hate me?” He tried, feeling like he was pushing his luck (again, treating Deceit like a wild animal that could attack with the slightest wrong move may be the best option for Roman here).

She laughed, and it was odd to hear, Roman didn’t think he’d ever heard her genuinely laugh before. It was nice. There were plenty of other pleasant adjectives he could’ve used to describe it, but he chose to ignore that train of thought because who knew where that would end up leading. 

“I don’t hate you.” 

“How do I know you aren’t lying?” 

Deceit considered the question, tilting her head. “I don’t hate you, but I _do_ think you’re a complete idiot. Does that clear things up?”  
“Uh. No. Not really. Not at all, actually.” 

“Well, I’ll put it this way. If I hated you, what reason would I possibly have to hide it?” Deceit asked.

“Well,” Roman began, thinking hard about any possible way someone who may or may not be evil might pretend not to hate him in order to further their evil plans. “You could be pretending to get on my good side, and then get something from me?”

Roman received an unimpressed eyebrow raise for that. “What could you possibly get me that I would go through all that trouble for?”

Now _that_ was a good question. Or maybe it was a terrible question, considering Roman couldn’t think up a viable answer for it. Deceit had always seemed content where she was, as far as her job went and whatnot. 

“I don’t know. Why don’t _you_ tell me?” 

“If I were trying to manipulate you into doing something for me, why would I tell you I’m trying to manipulate you into doing something for me?” 

Well, wasn’t Deceit a fountain of good questions. Roman didn’t exactly have an answer for that one either, so he huffed and turned away dramatically. 

“I’ll assume that silence means you’ve decided I’m trustworthy.”

“Isn’t ‘trusting Deceit’ an oxymoron?” Roman asked, pursing his lips. 

Deceit apparently chose not to dignify that with an answer, as they were now sitting in silence. She was sitting closer to Roman now though, which he would consider a win. A win in what, he really wasn’t sure, but he was winning at something. Be proud of him. The silence stretched out for several minutes, Roman mostly admiring the decoration of Deceit’s room and Deceit staring intently at Roman for some reason he didn’t understand.

“This is Lilith,” she said, finally breaking the silence as the giant snake Roman had temporarily forgotten about began moving around the bed, slowly moving so its very large head was on Roman’s lap. It was looking up at him with its very disturbing and very large snake eyes. 

“This is a giant snake,” Roman pointed out, wondering if the snake would kill him if he moved. 

“The giant snake’s name is Lilith.” 

“Lilith? Why’d you name your pet after the woman who betrayed Adam?” 

Deceit made a face, clearing her throat. “This is why I’m Jewish,” she muttered, not bothering to address Roman’s questioning look at that statement. “Lilith didn’t betray Adam, she refused to lay beneath him in the garden, and in turn, Adam raped her. She then fled the garden and was found months later by three angels due to her screams during childbirth. The angels threatened to kill her children if she didn’t return to the garden. She refused, thinking they wouldn’t truly hurt children of G-d, but, of course, they did.” 

“Yeah, they… definitely didn’t teach it that way in church.” 

“I’m aware.” 

“So… you’re Jewish? How does that… work?” 

Deceit eyes were once again going to get stuck from rolling them that hard. “I am my own person, Roman, I’m capable of free will.”

“But why…?” Roman began, before coming to the conclusion that it was yet another thing that made Deceit unique from the rest of the sides. 

“You can come to temple with me on Saturday if you’re so curious about it,” Deceit said, giving Roman what could almost be considered a smile.

“You go to temple? Like, a real, actual, in real life-?” 

“Yes, Roman.” 

“I… didn’t think we could do that.” 

“For being the creative trait, I’m not really sure of how creative you are.” 

“Shut up,” Roman muttered, crossing his arms, having decided Lilith the giant snake wasn’t going to bite his head off. 

“Only if you tell me you’ll come to temple this week.” 

“You meant that?” 

Roman didn’t think snakes could blush. In fact, he was almost one hundred percent sure snakes couldn’t blush. And yet Deceit was almost definitely blushing. And Roman (unlike Deceit) wasn’t going to lie-- it was cute. Not that he’d admit it. Which was, uh, a bit of a lie in itself. But that wasn’t necessary to talk about.

“Would I lie?” 


	2. Beneath the Streetlights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You’re my baby even though I hardly show it, and I’ve stopped wondering if you’ll ever see. But I know why, I know I’m easy to miss. If you only knew, I’m dreaming of holding you tight, ‘neathe the streetlights._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features many things, such as 1) Roman being called a goy, 2) Deceit making a sexual innuendo in a place of worship, 3) me saying fuck christianity (part two, the remix), 4) Roman being fucking stupid, and 5) me saying 'yeah i support patton's rights! patton's rights to shut the fuck up!' at least twice

Roman didn’t know much about religion, in fact, he would go as far as to say he had blocked that era in which he knew things about religion completely out of his life. And if Roman knew nothing about the religion he’d been raised with, then he knew even less about Judaism. As such, he didn’t know how to dress. He spent a rather long time trying to figure it out, and maybe it wasn’t that hard, he should dress nicely, somewhere between formal and casual, which was usually how he dressed anyway, but maybe, just _maybe,_ he was trying to look nice for Deceit (he was). 

So, at nine-thirty, he set out, finally, to Deceit’s room, skillfully dodging the other sides to avoid answering questions about where he was going and what he was doing and why he was missing Patton’s Saturday morning breakfast (maybe because your pancakes fucking suck, Patton, try using some vanilla extract next time so your pancakes aren’t as bland as your personality). He knocked on Deceit’s door, and it wasn’t fully closed, so it swung open at his touch, revealing Deceit, who was sitting on her bed, wearing possibly the most stunning dress Roman had ever seen, methodically rolling a stocking onto her leg (and it was highly important to note that Deceit had scales on her leg). Roman’s knock made her jump and look up, surprise written on her face before it turned into a smile. 

“I didn’t think you’d actually come.” She stood up, smoothing out her long black and yellow floral patterned dress. 

“Well. I live to surprise,” Roman answered after a second, trying very hard not to stare. Her smile was distracting him. Roman was easily distracted by pretty smiles. And pretty snake girls. Why was she so _pretty_? That had to be illegal. “Your scales are covered,” he suddenly noticed, feeling dumb for having not seen it before. It made him a little sad, because Deceit’s scales were one of the many things that made her so pretty. Not that she wasn’t pretty still. Roman had been thinking about how pretty she was, after all. 

“I’ve noticed that going outside in public with scales and a snake eye seems to get looks. Walking into a holy temple tends to get prayers for safety,” Deceit said, although she didn’t seem too broken up about it. “Shall we?” She asked, extending her arm towards Roman as she stepped around him and into the hallway. 

“Um…” Roman decided not to think too hard about it and took her arm, matching her smile. “Are we going to walk?” He asked, breaking the silence as they made their way down the hall and downstairs. 

“You’ll have to wait and see.” 

As it turned out, Deceit had a motorcycle. Roman asked where the hell she’d gotten a motorcycle, and was not given a proper response, so he decided to drop it. The most important thing was that Deceit had an extra helmet. And the _most_ most important thing was that Roman got to wrap his arms around Deceit tightly as they drove, and this was the exact point in time in which Roman decided that motorcycles were the greatest invention of humankind. 

Roman had never paid attention to architecture, and he wasn’t going to start now, but he’d be damned if the temple Deceit had pulled into the parking lot of wasn’t beautiful. “Come here,” Deceit took off Roman’s helmet and set it on the seat before pulling something out of her purse and holding it out to him. “You don’t have to wear it, but it’s a sign of respect when you enter the temple.”

“Of course I’ll wear it.” Roman took the kippah and placed it on his head hesitantly, looking at Deceit for help, knowing it was most definitely on wrong and probably crooked. Okay, definitely crooked, because Deceit giggled.

She gestured for him to come closer and lean down, which he did, and she pulled a couple bobby pins out of her purse, using them to secure the kippah to his head, making sure it was even. “There.”

Roman straightened back up, offering his arm to her, which she took, leading him through the open doors and giving the person at the door a friendly hello.

She led him to one of the pews, sitting down with him as they waited for everyone else to arrive and the service to start. 

Deceit was chatting in a friendly manner with the person next to her, who was referring to her by _Dee,_ which, Roman supposed, made sense. You couldn’t exactly go around introducing yourself as Deceit to normal humans. He’d have to ask Deceit later if she would prefer to be called that. 

The service started, an old man unrolling a scroll (which Deceit helpfully identified to Roman as the Torah) and read from it. It was a bit hard to follow, some of his words in Hebrew and others in English, but his voice was soothing and calm, he read out the passages as if they were truly important to him, that they had so much meaning. Was this what religion was supposed to feel like? Because Roman could get behind this. The religion he remembered was one that dictated how to live and taught you to fear the almighty, excluding others unlike them and shaming them for being different, but all this was… was love. Maybe Roman wouldn’t come out of this believing in any god, but he could certainly see the appeal.

Especially for Deceit. Feeling excluded and abandoned was all she seemed to know, so of course she’d found somewhere she could be included and felt love and acceptance. She didn’t have that anywhere else, and Roman felt his heart break for her. 

The man ended his reading with another mention of something he had continued to refer to as the ‘eternal light’, and Roman had no idea what that was, but it sounded pretty, and he liked pretty things, so he leaned over to Deceit and whispered in her ear, “Dee? What’s the eternal light?”

Deceit pointed in front of them, towards what Roman had assumed was a regular ceiling light. “The Ner Tamid. It’s always lit, symbolizes the menorah in the Temple of Jerusalem.”

“Oh.” Roman had several more questions after that, but another man had come to the front to ask everyone to stand and join in a prayer. 

Roman frowned, leaning over to whisper in Deceit’s ear as they stood up. “You don’t kneel down to pray?” That was one thing he thought he knew about religion.

“No, darling, we only kneel down for one thing,” Deceit whispered back with a mischievous smirk on her face.

“Um… what’s that?” Roman asked, feeling like he was definitely missing something.

“Remind me to pull you into a bathroom stall and I can show you.” 

And then Roman’s face was bright red for the next twenty minutes (really, Roman, you shouldn’t be thinking these sorts of things in a place of worship. Even if Deceit had been the one to put the thought in his head). The service concluded with another prayer (causing Roman to yet again think of ungodly things in bathroom stalls, thanks Deceit). 

“Is it over?” Roman asked, as everyone began standing up. 

“The service is, but now we get drunk on kosher wine and eat rugelach. Or, we would eat rugelach if I could eat rugelach. I drink the wine.”

“You can’t eat rugelach?” 

“I’m a snake, Roman.”

“Oh. Right.” Roman had temporarily forgotten that Deceit was… Deceit. “Oh, that reminds me! Do you want me to call you Dee? When we’re out?” Roman absolutely did not notice the implications of this statement. But Deceit definitely did. 

“You want to go out with me? You know, I don’t know if my mother would approve of my dating a goyim.” 

There were several things Roman could’ve said in response to that, but for some reason the first thing that popped into his head was, “Deceit, you don’t _have_ a mother.” 

“That’s hardly the point.”

“I disagree. It’s entirely the point,” Roman responded, as he was led into another room and handed a glass of wine.

“Fair warning, it’s kosher.” 

Roman had absolutely no idea what that meant, and looking down in his glass before looking up at Deceit, asked, “This isn’t meant to be like, symbolic blood or whatever, right?”

Deceit choked as she took a sip, laughing. “Fuck no. That’s an insane Christian thing, the blood and body of Christ. We don’t have anything to do with that. This is for fun. And the rabbi blesses it, for peace in the next week.” 

Roman looked back down at his glass and took a hesitant sip. “It’s… sweet? Is there sugar in this?” Okay, this was delicious. If there was one thing Roman liked more than wine, it was sugar (Wal-mart better hire him to write up wine mom shirt slogans after that one). 

“Mmm… not sure. The grapes are naturally sweet, and prepared differently. But sometimes they add sugar if the grapes aren’t sweet enough.”

“Either way, I love it.” 

There was a short silence as Roman sipped his wine (less sipped and more drank as much as he possibly could without losing all decorum so he could have as many glasses as possible) and Deceit swirled her glass around, staring into its depths like it had the answers to the universe hidden in a very complicated sudoku game on its surface.

“You never answered my question.” 

“Hm?” Roman looked up, tilting his head in confusion. “What question?”

“I asked about…” she cleared her throat, looking away before looking back into her wine glass, “seeing you again.” 

Evidently, having good wine had made Roman completely forget whatever their previous conversation had been. “Of course you’ll see me again. I’m not going anywhere. Unless you’re going somewhere? Oh god, are you leaving? I mean, permanently, I know you ducked out for a while, but I was hoping we could talk about that, I’m sure there are plenty of ways for you to play a part in our lives without Virgil around, we can figure something out--”

“No!” Deceit interrupted, waving her hand in Roman’s face to get him to shut up. “No, I’m not… I’m not leaving. I only meant seeing you. Specifically. At other times that are not when we’re doing our jobs.”

Oh. _Oh._ “ _Oh._ ” Roman cleared his throat, setting his wine down. “In what sense?”

“Well, I was,” Deceit began, finding it very hard to get the words out, as this was definitely not anything she’d ever said before, “I was _hoping_ that we could, ah, be… friends.” 

_Oh._ Oh. “Oh.” 

A pause. “I mean-!” Roman hastily added, “I’d love to! Be your friend! Of course!” That was _absolutely_ what Roman had been thinking, duh. Why would he have been thinking anything else? Deceit obviously still hadn’t gotten over Virgil, and it wasn’t like Roman was _jealous_ of that or anything. Why would he be? Jealous of _Virgil_? _Him_? Jealous? Of _Virgil?_ _Roman_? Preposterous. He’d only just met Deceit, after all. Well, technically. He’d only just gotten to know Deceit. They barely knew each other! Roman was still calling her Deceit! He didn’t even know her name! Did she even have a name? Who knew. Not Roman. He knew nothing about her. How could he possibly develop a crush on someone he barely knew? That wouldn’t happen. It would never happen. Although it was far more likely it would happen if he spent more time with her. Or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe spending more time with her would make Roman have more platonic-friendship feelings towards her. And that would be good. Besides, Deceit was lonely. She didn’t have anyone aside from the people here she only saw once a week, and she couldn’t exactly tell them everything about herself and be believed. So really, it would be Roman’s obligation to be her friend. So she would be less lonely. Of course. Now that that was justified and settled using some mental gymnastics anyone would be proud of, he could focus on what was happening outside of his own mind. 

Deceit had been saying something for the past few seconds, which Roman had accidentally completely missed due to his whirlwind brain trying to convince him he didn’t have a crush on someone whose name was literally Deceit. 

“Could you repeat that?” Roman asked, blinking. 

“I asked if you wanted some rugelach,” Deceit said, holding out a piece of pastry towards him, and her expression was so soft and happy and sweet and _fuck_ Roman really did have a crush, goddamnit all. 

“Roman?” 

“Oh. Yes? Yes. Yes! Rugelach, thank you. I appreciate it. A lot.” 

Deceit looked a bit bemused at that, shrugging as she went back to sipping her wine delicately. “It’s a pastry.” 

“No, I mean for inviting me out. And letting me see this part of you. I had no idea that you were…” Roman bit his lip, covering his very near insult with a large bite of rugelach.

“No idea I was what, Roman?” Deceit’s eyes flashed, and the tiniest amount of a hiss slipped out of her mouth as she spoke.

Roman don’t accidentally insult the person you have a crush on because you’re nervous challenge- “I had no idea you were so… deep.” Oof. Challenge failed, Roman. 

Deceit pursed her lips, setting her glass down. “Good to know I’m less shallow than you originally thought. Come on.” She grabbed his arm, leading him out the door and back to her motorcycle, music less nicely than she had earlier, and Roman was still trying to figure out exactly what was happening. 

He glanced behind him briefly. “Is it over?” 

“It is now.” 

Yeah, Roman had most certainly fucked this one up. But really! What should Deceit have expected? The only way she’d ever been around the other sides was shallow and self-centered! Granted, Roman had never bothered to get to know her better. And had made most of his decisions about her based off of a minimal amount of evidence collected from a small selection of encounters and meetings. But still! It certainly wasn’t his fault. Deceit was probably trying to make him feel guilty for hurting her feelings. Well, Roman wasn’t going to do it (hooray for more mental gymnastics). 

Deceit roughly shoved the motorcycle helmet at him and gestured for him to get on, and Roman wondered if he should say something to at least break the silence (because he most certainly was not going to be apologizing, Roman does _not_ apologize). But it didn’t matter, because soon it was too later because the motorcycle engine was on and would have drowned out Roman’s voice even if he had tried to speak. 

The drive back was significantly more awkward than the drive there had been, Roman trying to have his arms wrapped around Deceit while simultaneously touching her as little as possible, because she kept leaning away from his arms (whether this was on purpose because she was trying to get him thrown off and possibly killed or not, he wasn’t quite sure). 

It was even more awkward when they were back home and Deceit didn’t even look at him, simply held out her hand for the kippah she’d let him borrow, which Roman handed over after struggling for a minute with the bobby pins that kept tangling in his hair, and once she had it, she stomped out of the garage with enough passive aggression to rival Patton (roasted--like Patton’s terrible burnt Saturday morning pancakes). 

“Deceit?” Roman finally called after her, once she was almost out of the garage, her hand on the doorknob. “I-” It was right on the tip of his tongue, it was _right_ there, if he could swallow his pride for a _millisecond_ and things could go back to how they were half an hour ago, when Roman had been thinking about Deceit’s cute smile and how she needed the company of friends she could truly confide in in her life. But no. He simply could not do it. His mouth refused to listen to his brain and he instead said, “I had fun.” Killed it. Absolutely slaying it. Perfection. Roman was so good at everything, all the time. What brilliance. 

“Whatever,” Deceit responded (validly), slamming the door behind her as she left and leaving Roman alone in the garage to think about his life choices. They were all pretty bad. For being the romantic trait, Roman sure was bad at handling romance. Or at least, he was bad at handling a crush. He himself had never had a partner of any type before, so he wasn’t sure how’d handle that aspect of it. He’d always assumed he’d excel at making a partner happy. 

But if today was anything to show for it, that was as far from the truth as possible. For god’s sake, Roman hadn’t even done anything terrible, it was something so small and easily remedied with a simple apology, and he hadn’t even been able to do that; he’d doubled down and made it worse.

Somehow, he’d have to figure out how to make it up to Deceit. Without apologizing. There was no way Roman could apologize _now_ , he’d already doubled down on Not Apologizing and he couldn’t very well back down, could he? That would be rude. 

Or. The opposite of rude. Because apologizing was the right thing to do. But Roman was too busy with his rationalization of why it would actually be terrible (absolutely horrendous and the worst and rudest thing ever) to apologize for many, many reasons to focus on that.

So instead of doing the thing where he swallowed his pride and apologized to Deceit for insulting her before it turned into something much bigger than it had originally been, he chose to ignore it. How healthy and helpful of him. See Roman, this is why you have no friends. 

He wandered back into his room, flopping on his bed and staring up at the ceiling. How many times had Roman felt the way Deceit had? How many times had he felt unincluded and misunderstood, called shallow and conceited? Maybe it was all true, considering he wasn’t even deep enough to apologize for something so small and easily remedied. The few hours he’d spent with Deceit had been the most fun he’d had with someone else in months, and he didn’t want to throw it all away for nothing. He could go to Virgil, get him to talk about what had happened with Deceit, and then Roman could do some grand, big gesture for her and everything would be solved. And he wouldn’t even have to apologize! Truly an ideal situation. Yes, that was what he’d do. But first he had to find the motivation to get out of his bed now that he’d flopped down on it so dramatically. 

Or, he supposed, he could summon Virgil. What another ideal situation. Roman wouldn’t even have to get out of bed for this. He was so good at this whole friendship thing, look at him go. Everyone should be proud of him for his flawless problem-solving abilities. 


	3. Strolling Past the Old Graveyard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It may be hard to believe, but I’m as happy as can be; in love with no one and no one in love with me. But how things can change in the drop of a hat, all it took was one look and that was that, I want to be in your arms._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Virgil voice it's Saturday I’m chillin. Don’t fuckin @ me I’m chillin.

“What?” Virgil was highly unimpressed with being randomly summoned to Roman’s room at two pm on a Saturday. 

Roman had at least seemed to have attempted to give himself some semblance of decency by sitting up from his position of lying on his bed and staring up at the ceiling once Virgil was in his room. “I need you to tell me about Deceit,” he said, after finally managing to sit up completely 

“No,” Virgil responded, and then he was gone again. There was no way he was talking about Deceit with anyone except Deceit, and Deceit wasn’t talking to him, so he wouldn’t be talking about Deceit with anyone. And then Roman summoned him again. And that went on for nearly a full minute until Virgil finally gave in, falling onto Roman’s bed facedown and groaning. 

“Christ, what do you _want_?”

“I told you, I want you to tell me about Deceit.” 

“And you can’t talk to her yourself because…?” 

“That’s none of your business.” 

“Right. Sure it isn’t. You summon me repeatedly despite me clearly not wanting to talk to you about it, and then when I want to know _why_ you want to talk about it, you refuse to tell me. How on-brand for you.” 

“But, the sooner you help me, the sooner you can leave and go back to your… emo spider cave, or whatever.” 

Virgil made a face, flipping over and sitting up, pulling his hoodie up over his head and burying himself in it, rolling himself into a comfortable ball on the edge of Roman’s bed (he’d learned the Roll Into A Ball To Avoid Emotions trick from Deceit, obviously, although he wasn’t as skilled at it considering he wasn’t part snake). “Fine. What even is there to say anyway?”

“Well, let’s start with an easy one. Why did you leave her?” 

“ _That’s_ your easy one? How the fuck is that easy?”

“It seems easy to me. You left. Tell me the reason.”

If Virgil’s death stares could kill, Roman would be very dead. In fact, maybe Virgil would kill him now, he could make it look like an accident. “Why do you care?” Virgil growled, crossing his arms tightly around himself in an act of Rebellion. 

“Again, none of your business.”

Yet again, Virgil attempted to leave and was immediately summoned back, but not before he was able to grab one of his fake plastic spiders from a shelf in his room, which he immediately chucked at Roman, who screamed in response. It was therapeutic. 

He sighed, flopping himself back down on the bed. “I hate this fucking family.” He took another minute to even begin to respond to Roman’s question, as another act of Rebellion, and then he finally cleared his throat. “I left because it wasn’t safe on that side of the house. Even if Deceit--” he paused, it felt weird to not call her Dee anymore, but she’d made it fairly clear that Virgil wasn’t allowed the luxury of calling her nicknames anymore. For perfectly valid reasons, he supposed. “Even if Deceit did everything she could to protect me, I was paranoid all the time, and when you guys finally accepted me, I jumped at the chance.” Obviously, it hadn’t helped much. Virgil was still very much paranoid (and he really should have thought about how he probably couldn’t eliminate his perpetual paranoia no matter what he tried to do, considering he was literally the embodiment of anxiety, but fucking whatever). 

“And you didn’t say goodbye?” 

“And I didn’t say goodbye,” Virgil echoed, biting the inside of his cheek to keep himself from expressing too much of an emotion in front of Roman. 

“Huh.” Roman looked like he was thinking very hard about something, and Virgil did not want to be there when he had some sort of deep revelation that would result in Virgil losing his mind in Roman’s room for another hour and a half, so he slowly inched off the bed to make his way out.

“Do you regret it?” Roman asked, making Virgil jump (as he was almost at the door by this time and thought Roman hadn’t been paying attention to him anymore).

Virgil opened the door and stepped out of the room, giving Roman a very short and abrupt, “Yes,” before slamming the door and stomping back down the hall. Thankfully, Roman didn’t summon him again, so he assumed that was all that had been needed from him. He was rather worried about what Roman was planning on doing with that information, but then again, Virgil was rather worried about everything all the time, so he wasn’t sure if it was a valid worry or not. 

Either way, he was now safely back in his room, alone and not having to concern himself with whatever Roman’s plans with Deceit were, because apparently they were none of his business. Hopefully that meant he wouldn’t be included in their bullshit. 

Unfortunately, he was horribly wrong about that. 

But, for right now, he could live in blissful ignorance of whatever it was that was going on. Or at least, as blissful of ignorance as anxiety could ever live in. Although, Roman’s questions had gotten him thinking. Not thinking in the sense of ‘Roman was smart and provided valuable insight’, because that definitely wasn’t the case, but more in the sense of ‘Roman’s stupid prying into his personal life made him think about his truly fucked up decision to leave Deceit without saying goodbye and why it had been the worst mistake of his life’. 

It wasn’t making him feel great, that was for sure. But now that he’d started thinking about it, he couldn’t stop. It hadn’t been a planned decision, it had been split second, a split second decision made after months of agonizing over what to do until he had decided he _couldn’t take it_ anymore because if he didn’t leave, he’d always wonder how much better and safer he could’ve been if he had, and he was sick living in _what if’s_ , but now the biggest _what if’s_ in his life were _what if he’d stayed. What if he’d said goodbye. What if he’d talked about his thoughts of leaving with Deceit. What if he’d asked her to come with him, to introduce herself to the other sides and slowly grow to be accepted the way Virgil had._

He should’ve apologized, Virgil knew that. He should have apologized as soon as he’d come to his senses about what he’d done to Dee, but he _hadn’t,_ he’d procrastinated and waited too long until he’d convinced himself it was _too late_ because Dee would hate him for taking that long to apologize in the first place, and Virgil would have to apologize for that too, and come up with some valid reason as to why he’d waited that long. And it had been easier not to do that. To pretend he didn’t know her, to shove their entire lives under the rug and trample both of their feelings for each other under his heel. 

Of course he regretted it. There were some things people could do that were simply unforgivable. Leaving someone who loved you, never did anything but protect you and provide you with support from the day you both came into existence, without even telling them goodbye? That had to be _at least_ in the top three. 

Virgil sighed to himself, wandering over to his dresser and opening the top drawer, emptying it out of all of its contents (mostly memorabilia from the Motionless in White 2018 tour, Every Time I Die. Deceit had taken him to that), and carefully pulling out its false bottom, revealing a fairly deep hidden cupboard. Virgil reached into it and pulled out what he was looking for; a stuffed snake. It was cheesy, dark purple and black patchwork patterned and kind of lumpy and it still smelled a little like stale kettle corn and autumn leaves. He stared at it for a few long seconds, because having a staring contest with a stuffed snake that your girlfriend won for you at a pumpkin patch when you were both teenagers was a completely normal thing to do on a Saturday evening.

And then he fell backwards, hugging the snake close as he curled up on his bed, breathing in that smell, the smell of Halloween and hay bales, cold breezes and hot chocolates, warmth of laughter and the feeling of a gloved hand in his, keeping him safe, stable, holding him with a promise to never let him go, to never let him get lost, because she’d always be there, no matter what. The feeling of a chaste kiss on his cheek, and a far less chaste one against his lips, A whisper in his ear, _I love you_ , and Virgil had responded, without a second thought, without thinking of the consequences of his words or the negatives of the situation or the uncertainties, a simple, clear, _I love you too._

The stuffed snake had ended up being some form of cruel irony. Virgil had pointed it out at first, pinned against the wall as a prize for winning one of those toss-the-ring-on-the-bottle carnival games, jokingly asking Dee if patchwork snakes were real. Dee had said if they were, Virgil would have one, because look at that color scheme! It goes perfectly with you! Purple and black patchwork! What else could Virgil want? 

And Dee had spent an inordinate amount of time trying to win it, before she eventually gave up, finally bribing the man at the counter until she could have the snake, which she had proudly handed to Virgil, telling him she’d _totally_ won it and hadn’t cheated in any way, even though Virgil had been right there when she’d been bribing the carnie. 

An hour later, sitting on the dirt on the edge of the small hill the pumpkins grew on, looking down at all the people below them, Virgil hugging the snake close to his chest while Dee’s arm was wrapped around him, her head leaning into his shoulder, they’d each said _I love you_ for the first time.

Incredibly cruel irony. It was like the purple and black patchwork hoodie had been created for the sole purpose of making Virgil think about it, reminding him of what he’d left, what he loved, and it hurt him every time he thought about it. 

He’d never stopped loving Dee, his feelings had never changed since he’d left, he’d only managed to ignore them for longer periods of time. Now, he was in the position of no longer being able to ignore them. And it was hurting more than Virgil, it was hurting Deceit, and apparently, somehow, it was hurting Roman, too, although he couldn’t quite figure out why exactly it concerned him. Whatever the reason, it would soon end up being much more than simply Virgil and Deceit’s personal business, because Virgil had thought too hard about it, hadn’t thought hard enough about it, hadn’t thought the right things in the right order at the right time, and now… well, now it was a mess, wasn’t it?

He squeezed the snake tighter, holding it against his body as he allowed himself to fall asleep. 

_“I don’t know if we should be doing this. What if we’re needed? What if something happens to us?”_

_“Virgil, I promise, it’ll be okay. I’ve been planning this for weeks. If anything happens, we can leave in a second.”_

_“Yeah, but…” Virgil trailed off, twisting his hoodie sleeves in his fingers as he considered Dee’s words, knowing she was right, but still finding it absolutely impossible to let go of his worries._

_“Do you trust me, darling?” She asked, taking his hand in hers._

_Virgil didn’t even need to take time to consider that, which was surprising, considering he took the time to consider everything, and even more surprising because the embodiment of Deceit was asking Virgil if he trusted her._

_“Yes.” He unfurled his hand from around his hoodie sleeves and took Dee’s. “Always.”_

_Dee grinned, and had Virgil been paying attention, he would’ve really seen the smile, a smile of pure love, absolute adoration._

_“Then off we go,” Dee said, her smile growing larger as she reached up and pulled off her bowler hat, placing it crookedly on Virgil’s head. “It might rain today, I couldn’t live with myself if you got wet and had a miserable time.”_

_“Are you going to tell me where we’re going yet?”_

_“Well, that would ruin the surprise, wouldn’t it?”_

_“You know I don’t like surprises.”_

_“No, but you like me,” Dee responded, winking,_

_Virgil blushed, looking away. “Yeah, whatever.” They continued walking, arm in arm, Dee still wearing that almost euphoric smile and Virgil still blushing like a fool, ducking his head down and feeling rather thankful that Dee’s bowler hat covered his face fairly well._

_“Oh my god,” he whispered, and it took absolutely everything he had in him to not bolt forward into the carnival Dee had taken him to, because… holy shit, Virgil adored it. It was like Halloween had thrown up for an entire city block and he was absolutely living for it. He wasn’t even thinking about all the people; in fact, it was hardly crowded at all anyway, Dee really had planned it all out. He almost said it right then, that he loved Deceit with all of his heart, but he kept it in, instead giving her only a smile._

_“They grow their own pumpkins, too. Didn’t you always tell me you wanted to carve a pumpkin sometime?”_

_She was so thoughtful and sweet, Virgil felt like he might spontaneously combust. “You know I did, it’s all I talk about every October,” Virgil said, trying not to put too much of his excitement into his tone (but likely failing because he was almost vibrating with excitement)._

The dream faded from Virgil’s memory the second he woke up, but the memory of that day, every single detail, was buried somewhere in his _Painful Memories_ brain folder, waiting for him to blow off its dust and cobwebs and lose himself in everything that was Deceit once again. But that once again would not be today (as it turned out, it was now the next day, and Virgil had slept for a solid fifteen hours). 

Roman had different plans about what would be happening today, because not five minutes after Virgil had opened his eyes and groaned at the light peeking in from his curtains he’d forgotten close, Roman was barging into his room to announce his great plan.

“Virgil! Get up, I need you to help me with something. It’s important, it’s actually really important, and I need you to get up _right now_.” Roman wasn’t a very convincing liar at the best of times, and especially not now, when Virgil was barely even conscious of what he was saying. Whatever it was Roman wanted him to do, Virgil was about ninety percent certain it wasn’t urgent or important. In fact, it was probably going to end up being the least important and least urgent thing that had ever occurred.

This, of course, did not stop Roman from pulling the sheets off of Virgil’s bed to prevent him from burrowing himself farther, and threatening to take his pillows as well, if he didn’t get up right that instant.  
And so, he’d reluctantly gotten up, stretching (and hissing at Roman) before following him out the door, not even taking up his already minimal energy to ask Roman what the damn hell was going on, because, first and foremost, he didn’t give a shit. 

Deciding not to ask what was going on was probably a terrible decision, because Roman led him to the dining room, pushed him through the door, and then immediately closed it on him. And locked it. The dining room door didn’t even _have_ a lock as far as Virgil knew. Sometimes (all the time), he despised Roman’s powers. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” He yelled, pounding on the door.

“This is for your own good!” Roman yelled back.

“He really can be a prick, can’t he?” Asked a voice behind him, making him jump and turn around. 

“Dee?” Roman, what the hell are you planning?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sidenote i dont edit any of my writing after writing it we die like men


	4. No, My Heart Will Go On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Every day that goes by, I die a little more. Every day you’re not here, I’m crying at the door. Now I’d be the first to say that this is no way to live, so I try to get you off my mind, but I can’t shake your loving smile, can’t forget the days you drove me wild._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> roman be like 'im gonna do whats called an epic gamer moment'

Roman’s plan had been one of pure genius, at least, in his mind. His pure genius plan had been to set up a nice, happy atmosphere for Virgil and Deceit, and then to lock them in a room together until they made up. He didn’t see any way for it to go wrong. In fact, he would easily admit this was his greatest plan of all time and a better plan had never been made. 

There was a piece of his plan that went a bit awry when he attempted to create a happy atmosphere for Virgil and Deceit. He was the romantic side, his instinct was always to go a little… overboard. In the sense that the way he’d decorated the dining room (yes, he spent a significant chunk of time decorating the dining room) had been much more extra than his purely innocent intentions of simply rekindling Virgil and Deceit’s friendship were. 

There were flowers. So, so many flowers. Roman had known better than to use red roses (because everyone knows that red roses are a symbol of love), but he _had_ used yellow roses. They symbolize friendship! Everyone knew that! Duh! Because everyone knew about the symbolism of roses and had flower symbolism charts memorized in their heads. 

Not only that, but Roman had provided food. He hadn’t cooked, that would’ve been a disaster waiting to happen, but he _had_ conjured up some food that he was fairly certain Virgil, at least, would enjoy. He had no idea what Deceit ate, all he knew was that she drank wine (so he conjured up a bottle of kosher wine). He’d attempted an internet search for ‘what snakes eat’ and hadn’t gotten any good answers, because he wasn’t sure if Deceit ate field mice or not. There was a good chance she did, but at the same time, there was an equally high chance that she didn’t and would most certainly see an offering of field mice for dinner as incredibly insulting. So Roman decided not to take any chances and instead went with a rare steak. That was probably safe. 

His next task had been the general atmosphere of the room. He’d gone back and forth on whether it would be appropriate to have a candlelit dinner before deciding that a candlelit dinner didn’t necessarily have to be romantic, there was nothing inherently romantic about candles, so he went ham.

In hindsight (which Roman did not have yet, as he was still preparing the room, but for narrative purposes, the author would like to provide exposition here, and we will not talk about this out of place fourth wall break that is here for literally no reason at all), he should’ve realized what exactly he was doing. Because from literally anyone else’s perspective, it would look like he was trying to set up Deceit and Virgil. This was most definitely not what he was trying to do, seeing as he was fairly sure he was developing a large crush on Deceit. And setting her up with someone who was Not Him would hinder his abilities to date her. 

But Roman, as previously stated, was not blessed with hindsight, so instead he was making incredibly idiotic decisions with the intent to make his crush happy without having to actually apologize to her. 

Convincing Deceit to meet him in the dining room had been harder than he’d originally expected since Deceit was madder at him than he’d realized. But eventually he’d managed it, getting her to sit down at the (romantic) candlelit dinner and wait for him for a minute while he went to abduct Virgil.

Virgil had been almost as consternated as Deceit about being forced to go somewhere with Roman with zero explanation and for no apparent reason, but Roman was proud of himself when he successfully got Virgil into the dining room and locked him in with Deceit. Even when Virgil pounded on the door and cussed him out for a solid two minutes, he remained very proud of himself. 

“This is for your own good! I’ll let you both out in two hours!” Roman yelled through the door, interrupting Virgil’s stream of curses.

“Oh, _fuck_ you!” Virgil yelled back at him before groaning. 

Roman heard Deceit say something before he turned away from the door and flopped down on the living room couch, content to wait there for the next two hours, and hopefully not have to extinguish any fires or break up any fistfights.

Virgil, however, was much less content, as he was now pacing the dining room, running his hands through his hair. “If I tried to sink out-”

“Roman would know. We should wait it out, then go our separate ways and forget this ever happened,” Deceit interrupted, pouring herself and Virgil each a glass of wine and gesturing to the seat opposite her. 

“What’s he even trying to do?” Virgil asked, sighing as he sat down, wanting to reach out and bat the wine glass off the table like a cat. 

“God only knows and he won’t tell.” 

Virgil sighed yet again. “Look, Deceit-”

“Don’t. Don’t even try it. Let’s play a game. See how long we can last without speaking.” 

Ouch. That stung a little. Or actually, it stung a lot. He wanted to get up and start pacing again, but he stopped himself. His hand inched closer to the wine glass. “This is stupid.”

“Fourteen seconds? That’s our record?”

The wine glass toppled over, falling off the edge of the table and bouncing once, twice, three times before shattering, wine spilling on the tablecloth and running across the floor. Virgil’s hand went back to his lap in a split second as if it hadn’t knocked the glass over. He stared at the wine as it pooled next to his chair, broken glass scattered on the wood floor. 

Deceit wasn’t even looking at it, she was watching Virgil, her face a mix of emotions that Virgil didn’t have the energy to decipher, with the tiniest hint of a smile on her face. 

“You really haven’t changed, have you?” It wasn’t said like an insult, her tone was more nostalgic than anything else. 

Virgil shrugged. “I guess not.” 

“My kitten,” Deceit said softly, her eyes going back down to the table and staring resolutely at it.

He felt himself blush, the memories of the nickname coming back to him in a flood. He’d always pretended to hate it, but his pretending had never been convincing, especially not to Deceit. “Hey, if you can call me that, then I get to call you Dee,” he finally said. 

“I can call you that?” 

Oh. The meaning of what Virgil had said hadn’t sunk in as he’d spoken, and he hesitated, trying to figure out what to say. “I guess. I don’t mind.” He didn’t. It felt natural, right, the same way spending time with Deceit felt natural. It was familiar and safe, it wasn’t new and scary and full of unknowns. 

“Then you can call me Dee.” 

“Deal,” Virgil said, kicking his leg out and nudging Dee under the table to get her to look at him. “I really think that since we’ll be here for two more hours, we should… make the most of it, ya know?” He cringed at the wording, that came out much more sexual than he’d meant for it to sound. 

Thankfully, Dee didn’t seem to notice. “Meaning…?” 

“We could… talk,” Virgil offered. 

“We could.” 

There was a silence as they both stared at each other, the candles’ flames rippling across their faces. 

“Well, I wanted to say that-” Virgil started.

“I still love you,” Deceit interrupted, the words rushing out of her mouth like they were impossible to keep inside. 

Sometimes, there are moments when silence feels deafening. It takes up the entirety of a room and it remains there, screaming in the air, begging to be broken.

This was not that type of silence. This type of silence was the kind that doesn’t want to be broken, it wants you to sit in it for as long as you can, the kind where if you were to open a window, atmospheric crickets would start chirping.

Virgil swallowed, and it was so loud, it was the loudest sound he’d ever heard, but the silence didn’t budge. He bit the inside of his lip, glancing around the room for some sort of _deus ex machina_ way to get out of this. Of course, there was nothing, because of Roman and his stupid plans. 

“Dee, I-” Virgil felt his words catch in his throat, choking him as he tried to push them out until they spilled out of him in the form of tears he hadn’t meant to let out. He ducked his head down and wiped them away, although Dee had noticed them, seeing as how she was standing up and wrapping her arms around Virgil. 

“I-” he tried again, burying his face in her shoulder and trying to muffle the sob that escaped him. 

“I know,” she said softly, brushing a hand through his hair. “I know.” She let Virgil cry into her shoulder, holding him close, and Virgil hadn’t been held like in _so long_ and he hadn’t been loved or felt protected and cared for, this was the first time in _so long,_ and he missed it. Damn, he missed it. 

“I want to…” he took a deep breath, remembering the breathing techniques Dee had taught him so long ago, to help calm him down before an anxiety attack came. The exercise worked surprisingly well for calming him down during any sort of emotional upheaval, as well. 

“I want to try again.” 

She sighed quietly, and Virgil could feel her pulling away before her arms left him. “Virgil, we couldn’t. I can’t…” and Virgil knew what she was thinking, that she couldn’t forgive him for what he’d done, and he couldn’t blame her for that. 

“I’m sorry,” Virgil whispered, watching her arms fall to her sides as he wiped the remaining tear tracks from his face. 

“I know.” 

“And if there was any way… if there was anything I could do to redo that day I left, if there was anything I could do _now_ to make up for what I did to you, you… you have to believe me when I say I would do it in a heartbeat.” 

Deceit raised an eyebrow at him before turning away, facing the wall. “I don’t _have_ to do anything, Virgil.” 

“No,” Virgil agreed, regretting his word choice. “I’m sorry.” 

“Stop saying that.” 

He very nearly responded to that with, ‘sorry’, before he shut his mouth. He brought his hand up to his mouth, chewing on the edges of his nails, trying to distract himself from the silence. 

A small noise came from Deceit’s direction, almost like she knew what Virgil was doing and was half a second away from telling him to stop biting his nails, but she didn’t. She stayed quiet, arms wrapped around herself, staring at the wall.

“Dee?” Virgil said, trying to get her attention again.

“Hm?”

“Can you sit back down? You standing there Blair Witch-style is giving me anxiety.” Although it wasn’t particularly hard to give Virgil anxiety. 

Dee nodded, turning back around and flopping down onto the chair across from Virgil again with the dramatics of someone who was pretending everything was perfectly fine when in reality their entire world was crashing down around them. 

Virgil glanced at the clock and groaned. “It’s only been fifteen minutes.” Dee followed his gaze over to the clock. 

“So it has.” 

“What are we supposed to do?” 

Virgil didn’t receive an answer to that, so he remained in the silence, once again staring down at the puddle of spilled wine on the floor. He should probably try to clean it up before it stained the floor permanently. But he wouldn’t. Roman would have to deal with it, it was his fault for locking them in here anyway. 

“If we tried again,” Dee began, making Virgil jump (he’d expected to sit in silence for the remainder of their time in there), “we’d be miserable. I’d constantly throw what you did to me in your face every time we’d have a fight.”

“And I’d deserve it,” Virgil interrupted.

“And that wouldn’t be _healthy_ ,” Dee argued. “Neither of us would be happy.” 

“I would be.” 

Dee gave him a sad smile, shaking her head. “Only because you’re lonely.”

“And you aren’t?” Virgil asked, tears once again threatening to spill. 

“Well, _fuck,_ Virgil, of _course_ I am. At least you have _friends,_ I don’t have anyone! But that doesn’t guarantee I’d be happy if we were together again.” 

“But you _might_ be,” Virgil tried, although without much conviction. He didn’t want to talk Dee into dating him again, much less to talk Dee into forgiving him. But he couldn’t help his feelings, the desperate, lonely ache for that familiarity they’d once had. 

“Well, Roman certainly seems to support it,” Dee said, subtly changing the subject over to something more palatable and she looked around at the overwhelmingly romantic aura of the room.

“Yeah, what the fuck is up with that? Why does he care all of a sudden?” Virgil was all for latching onto a sudden subject change, thank god. 

“I think it’s his non-apology way of apologizing to me,” Dee said, and that soft smile was back again, only it wasn’t directed towards Virgil, and he instantaneously felt a sharp twinge of jealousy, making his stomach turn. 

“Apologizing? What did he do to you?” 

“He called me shallow,” Dee responded, apparently not picking up on Virgil’s openly hostile and protective tone.

“Oh, I am _so_ killing him,” Virgil muttered, grinding his teeth. 

“Please don’t. We only just started becoming friendly.”

“So you forgive him for calling you shallow?” 

Dee seemed to consider the question, before shrugging. “He didn’t mean to be insulting. He doesn’t think through his words sometimes. I was angrier at him for not apologizing than for being rude.” 

Virgil blinked, looking down. “Is that why you’re mad at me, too?” He hadn’t consciously intended to bring their conversation back around to this again, but it was unavoidable. It was like a balloon, sitting between them on the table, waiting to be poked again. But he had to be careful, he couldn’t poke it too hard, he wouldn’t be the one to pop the balloon, he’d only bat it over to Dee and hope she’d pop it for him. 

“Why didn’t you ever come back? I told myself I could forgive you if you came back in the next week to explain what happened, then in the next month, and the next one, and you never did.” 

And the balloon was back on Virgil’s side. “Because I thought you’d hate me.” And he batted it back.

“I could never hate you, Virgil. Not even now.” 

Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until-- 

“I wanted you to come with me, but I was afraid that they wouldn’t accept you the way they did with me. I was afraid they would turn me against you and make me think you were the enemy. And they almost did. Without even realizing that’s what they were doing.” 

_Pop._

“But it’s not their fault, they had no idea. I didn’t tell them anything, it was all me, it was all my fault, I was so afraid of not being _good_ that I became… awful.” Virgil wondered if there was a way to un-pop a balloon. Dee had always been good at sewing. She could sew the balloon back together, blow it up again, but air would still leak out from the holes between the stitches, no matter how tightly it was sewed shut. 

“Virgil…” Deceit began, trailing off before she even had a fully formed thought. She stood up, walking over to Virgil again, careful to avoid the wine and broken glass, holding out her hand. “Come here.” 

Hesitantly, Virgil reached up and took her hand, letting her pull him out of his chair, and for a minute, they stared at each other, inches away, Dee’s fingers intertwined with his.

Dee leaned forward, so close their noses touched, and Virgil felt his face heat up, and he stayed in that position for one second, two seconds, three… and he realized Dee was waiting for him, asking if this was okay, asking if he wanted to continue this, and the stray thought that they still hadn’t had an actual conversation popped into his head, but it was pushed away with the speed of light when he closed the distance between them, kissing Dee with as much love as he could possibly put into one single kiss. 

His free arm wrapped around Dee, curling her cape into his hand, the familiar smooth fabric feeling perfect under his fingers. It felt like coming home, like this was exactly where he was supposed to be, what he should be doing. Dee’s arm held him at the small of his back, pulling him close, and she was so _warm_ , which should be contradictory because she was a snake and she was cold-blooded so she should be cold but she was _warm_ and for the first time in _so long,_ Virgil felt content again. 

It was a funny thing, forgiveness. It was never given when you said it was, it could be said at any point in time, but that didn’t mean a thing. It could be faked with hardly any effort whatsoever, and you could never tell when someone truly meant their forgiveness. And there was something else, it could be taken away at any time, the next time you made a mistake, said or did something you shouldn’t have, and suddenly that forgiveness would be thrown down the drain and crushed to bits in the garbage disposal without a second thought. 

For the time being, though, Virgil would take Dee’s temporary forgiveness and try to make it last as long as possible, he didn’t want to lose her ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> are u gonna post the next chapter of your fanfic immediately after you finish it like a MAN or are you gonna edit it after u write it like some kinda DEMOCRAT


	5. Everyone Can Tell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Whisper my name, my heart leaps, as if some day you will be mine. But heaven knows ‘til then I’ll just toe the line and try to rest easy. It’s not much fun to go around knowing there’s no one that’ll ever compare to you, my love._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter has it all. Acrylic nails, romantic rivalries, snake scales, and Roman planning out a hypothetical and very elaborate, victorian gothic murder for himself so as to avoid thinking about how he hates himself. What a mood.
> 
> anyway its loving vesper hours.

There was something disconcerting about unlocking the door to the dining room which you had locked your crush and her ex in for two hours with the intent to get them to become friends again and seeing your crush, sitting on a dining chair, with her ex, sitting in her lap, curled up, his arms wrapped around her neck with a content smile you had never seen him wear before. Although Roman couldn’t quite pinpoint what was so disconcerting about it. 

Maybe it was the fact that _he_ was the one who wanted to be napping in a comfortable little ball on Deceit’s lap. 

“Uhh…” How was one supposed to address their crush and their crush’s ex who was sitting on her lap in a comfortable little ball?

Glancing up at him, Deceit put a finger to her lips. “Hey, kitten,” she said softly, brushing a hand through Virgil’s bangs. 

Roman’s jaw dropped and he didn’t even bother listening to Deceit’s ‘be quiet’ warning. “ _Kitten_?” Well, this was not the ideal situation. In fact, it was the least ideal situation. Roman received a glare from Deceit for that as Virgil jumped up, nearly knocking both him and Deceit off the dining chair.

“Wha- huh- what?” 

“You can leave now,” Roman said shortly, immediately feeling very cranky at Virgil for completely unknown reasons. 

“Oh, thank god,” Virgil muttered, taking Deceit’s hand and pulling her up, heading out the door.

“No, thank me,” Roman responded crankily in a cranky manner while feeling cranky.

Deceit stopped at the doorway, dropping Virgil’s hand. “Just a minute, Virgil. You can meet me in my room. My snakes missed you.” 

Now _that_ only made Roman feel even more cranky. 

“Roman, I wanted to thank you. Your insane method of setting me and Virgil up again actually worked.” 

“That wasn’t- I wasn’t trying to-” Well, fuck. That had been the opposite of what Roman had been trying to do. Was it the roses? It had to have been the roses. Or maybe the literal _candlelit dinner_. Oh, hindsight was twenty/twenty. Although, Roman’s hindsight was telling him that regular sight probably should have seen this one coming. 

“Of course you weren’t,” Deceit said, nodding seriously, before she grinned, showing off those stupid cute little fangs. “But thank you anyway.”

“No, but I wasn’t-”

Roman cut himself off when Deceit learned forward and kissed his cheek. “I’m only trying to thank you, take the compliment and move on.”

His mouth opened, and then closed again, and then opened, and he continued to do that, and maybe he would turn into a fish and flop around on the floor until he died. That would be far preferable to his current situation. “I-”

“It’s nice to have a friend,” Deceit said, and that was the nail in the coffin for Roman. So, as Deceit left the living room, following Virgil after flashing Roman one more adorable smile, please say your prayers, read your eulogies, shed your tears, and lay a flower on his grave because Roman was dead and _not_ in the good way. 

“ _Fuck,_ ” he muttered, and then he… sat on the floor. Thinking about what he’d done. He was starting to feel like an idiot now. A complete moron. Why hadn’t he thought that maybe if he tried to get Deceit and Virgil to make up, they might make up _too_ much?

Possibly because he was an idiot. But now was not the time nor place for Roman’s self esteem issues (it was), it was the time for Roman to figure out the next step of his plan. Or, a plan B, considering getting Virgil and Deceit to become friends again had been his entire plan, and, clearly, that had failed. 

Or worked too well. Although Roman would like to point out that was entirely not his fault whatsoever. It wasn’t like he’d consciously tried to get Deceit and Virgil together, he was simply too romantic and charming! 

********

“I feel like I’m not doing a very good job,” Virgil muttered, holding Dee’s hand out and examining her nails, chewing on the edge of the nail file. 

“Nonsense, you’re doing perfectly, darling.” 

Roman glanced up from his own nails in time to see Dee’s smile, one that made his knees weak and his heart flutter around in his chest, directed at Virgil. It sent an unsavory jealous tingle down into his spine, and he looked back at his nails, aggressively filing the acrylics down to a pointed edge. Dee had asked if he wanted to spend time with her; she said she’d wanted to redo her acrylic nails and _of course_ Roman had agreed, but what Dee had neglected to tell him was that Virgil would be joining them. 

And so, Roman was forced (not _forced_ , he could leave at any time, but he had decided that the less amount of time Virgil and Deceit had alone together was a win for him) to watch as Virgil sat on Deceit’s lap and filed her nails for her, his head resting on her shoulder. There were several things wrong with that, the first and most glaring thing was that there was _another chair right next to Dee_ , which was perfectly capable of being sat in by Virgil. In fact, sitting in that chair probably would have even made it easier for Virgil to file said nails, but _oh no_ , he had to sit on Dee’s lap, like some kind of clingy, overly attached, emotionally--

_Crack._

Roman had broken the nail file. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he sighed, setting down the broken pieces on the table and flexing his fingers, only now realizing he had a rather bad cramp in his hand. Probably from how hard he’d been filing his nails. 

He chose to blame Virgil for this, after all, if he hadn’t been here, Roman wouldn’t have had anyone to get mad at to begin with, and that made perfect sense. 

“This looks awful,” Virgil said, interrupting Roman’s train of thought and causing him to glance up, leaning forward to look at Dee’s nails.

“That’s because you’re doing it wrong,” Roman interrupted, not bothering to wonder if maybe he shouldn’t be so openly of a jackass to Virgil. He liked Virgil-- really! He did! Virgil hadn’t done anything to deserve Roman’s irritation, but that didn’t mean Roman would cope with his feelings in a healthy manner when instead he could take out his anger on Virgil for dating his crush. 

“Well, I’ve never done this before,” Virgil said defensively, turning to glare at him.

Dee opened her mouth to say something, probably to yet again be the mediator between another one of Virgil and Roman’s arguments, but Roman beat her to it.

“That’s no excuse! You can’t even file nails into an even shape, that should be common knowledge!” 

“Well, _fine then,_ if you’re so fucking talented, why don’t you do it?” Virgil asked, throwing the nail file in Roman’s general direction and standing up, angrily collapsing onto the couch. 

“Virgil, I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way,” Dee said calmly, smiling at Roman as he picked up the nail file Virgil had thrown at him. It wasn’t the knees-weak, heart fluttering smile, but it was a smile nonetheless. 

“Sure he didn’t,” Virgil grumbled. He didn’t seem mad at Roman, only mildly annoyed. Maybe he was more mad at Deceit for siding with Roman than at Roman himself for being rude (Roman would be the first to admit that he’d been particularly rude, but he wasn’t about to apologize for it because he still had yet to learn his lesson about how apologizing was Good). 

Roman was feeling very happy and proud of himself for his behavior, as he was now holding Deceit’s hand (tenderly, lovingly, even, please notice him, Dee) and filing her nails for her. Her hand was soft, her fingers freezing cold, and Roman found that soothing for some reason. 

“Alright, let me see the destruction Virgil caused with your other hand,” Roman said, loud enough for Virgil to hear and give an angry grumble in response to. 

Dee held out her other hand and Roman’s breath caught in his throat, because she had _scales_ on that hand, and Roman had never realized she had scales on her hand, maybe that was why she always wore gloves but the _important_ thing was that Dee had _scales on her hand_ and that meant that Roman would finally have an excuse to touch her scales without it being weird.

And so, he hesitantly reached out and ran his index finger along Deceit’s scales, and then immediately pulled his hand back when he felt Deceit’s hand shift, and a small, surprised intake of breath from her. 

“Sorry,” he said quietly, and then went on to filing her nails and trying to ignore how wonderful her scales felt. This was fine, it was perfectly fine, he was thinking about how much he wanted to touch Deceit while her boyfriend was _right there,_ and Virgil was his _friend,_ and Roman had never seen him this happy and content before, and it wasn’t _fair._

Couldn’t he have one thing? The one thing he wanted? How hard was it for the universe to let him have the one thing he wanted, one time? Apparently pretty hard, because Roman never seemed to get anything he wanted. 

“Aren’t you done yet?” Virgil asked, his voice muffled due to the fact that he had burrowed himself into couch pillows. 

“Why don’t you come back over here, kitten? I’m sure Roman won’t mind.”

Roman was about two seconds away from ‘ _well actually'_ -ing Deceit, but he bit his tongue, for once in his life choosing to shut up and let Virgil come back to his previous position of sitting on Dee’s lap. 

It was at this point that Roman realized how terribly he was at handling jealousy. He’d never experienced it over a person before, and it was somehow even stronger than the feelings of jealousy when Logan’s ideas were picked over his, when he was talked over and ignored. Dee seemed to care about him and despite her occasional teasing flirtations, she seemed to honestly value him as a person and as a friend, which only made his jealousy at her happiness all the more painful for Roman. 

He was roughly halfway done with filing Deceit’s nails when she and Virgil decided to do the unthinkable. It was disgusting, awful, unprecedented, and the worst display of public affection Roman had ever been forced to witness.

They _kissed._

And Roman almost snapped another nail file in half. Thankfully, he regained his self control in time to avoid another emery board massacre and instead dropped it on the table and stood up abruptly. 

“I remembered. I have something- I have to- it’s really important, and I have to- I’m going.” And go he did, bolting down the hall and up the stairs, rushing into his room and slamming the door behind him, breathing deeply. 

He remembered the breathing techniques Virgil always talked about, trying them, over and over again, counting his breaths, holding them in, letting them out, over and over, counting and breathing, until he finally collapsed on the floor, finally allowing himself to cry. 

Once he let the tears out, he couldn’t seem to get them to stop, they kept coming and coming and Roman wondered if maybe he’d turn his room into that scene from _Alice in Wonderland_ , only he didn’t have a human-sized bottle to hide himself in so he could float away to Wonderland on his tear river, so he supposed he’d drown in here, in his own tears, and that seemed a fitting end. Poetic, romantic, metaphorical, very Shakespearian if you ask him. Or maybe he could lie down and let himself rot, maybe he wouldn’t die, he’d stay conscious forever as the flies laid eggs in his eyes and his body stiffened up and turned cold. Now that was another good way to go; Poe would be proud of that one. 

A bit too grim for someone so romantic, though. Perhaps he could somehow get Deceit to kill him. He’d always wanted to have a death befitting of a yearning 19th dandy artist in love with his muse, betrayed at the last second, with words of love and adoration still written on his lips. Yes, that would be the ideal way. A fruitless attempt at a declaration of love, perhaps, a plea for things to be different, that he would do anything in his power to fix things. A knife at the edge of the room, blade glinting in the darkening shadows, perhaps even a final (or first, technically) kiss before the knife slid across his throat, spraying blood across the room. That would be the last vision he’d have, of the one he loved, staring down at him, his blood covering her as she dropped the knife and left the room, leaving Roman’s lifeless body alone. 

Now _that_ would be poetic. Although, now that Roman thought about it, perhaps Oscar Wilde would copyright strike him from beyond the grave if he did that. He was supposed to be creative and come up with his own original ideas.

Well, great, now he was back to thinking about his failure as a trait and as a person. Not even planning out his hypothetical, extravagantly romantic, murder could cheer him up, and that _always_ worked.


	6. Impossible Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Now that I need you more than ever, I feel like the world’s gone on without me and I’ve got no one. I’ve been crying, can’t you see? It goes without saying that I wish that I was standing by your side tonight. An impossible love, is all I got going, all I am knowing._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Deceit slanders the name of Mickey Mouse and everything he stands for.

Crying was an underrated way to solve problems. It was much like cursing in that it was a completely harmless way of stress relief, it allowed you and everyone else in your general vicinity to become well acquainted with your emotions, and it made everyone in that general vicinity uncomfortable and not sure what to do.

Which was why crying in your room, alone, with the door shut and locked, was the ideal way to cry. Roman was now realizing this fact, but he would most certainly be remembering it for the next time he needed to let out his emotions (which would probably be ten minutes from now, because Roman was going through some shit at the moment). 

A knock on his door made him jump, and he cleared his throat, wiping his face to make sure whoever it was wouldn’t be able to tell he’d been crying. 

“Roman?” 

It was Deceit. Why was she here? Didn’t she have things to be doing? Virgils’ to be unnecessarily kissing? Couldn’t she leave him alone to wallow in his grief for a little longer?

“Yeah,” Roman responded, wondering if he should make an attempt at getting off the floor before deciding that was too much work and he would rather continue to sit on the floor in his Grief. 

“Can I talk to you?” Deceit sounded so concerned and that made Roman want to start crying again, yet again thinking about how unfair his life was. 

“Yeah,” he repeated, hoping Dee wouldn’t ask to be let in.

“Can you unlock the door?” 

Damnit. Roman sighed to himself, standing and unlocking the door with sloth-like speed and agility. “Yeah.” 

As soon as his door was opened, Roman sat back down on the floor, deciding not to care that sitting on the floor for no apparent reason was a concerning thing for someone else to see. “What’s up?” 

“I think I should be asking you that,” Dee said, sitting next to Roman on the floor, her dress spread out around her like she was some kind of Disney princess. 

“Hm? I’m fine. Right as rain. Fit as a fiddle. Up to snuff. Sound as a bell. Fresh as a dais-”

“You know, saying the same thing five times isn’t the greatest way to convince me that you’re okay,” Dee interrupted, which Roman was glad for, as he was beginning to run out of synonyms for ‘I’m fine’. 

“Really? Because I thought saying I was fine meant that I was fine. Look at me!” Roman threw his hands up in the air and waved them around without much conviction. “I’m fine!”

“Roman.”

“Why would you think anything else? I’m great!”

“Roman.” 

“Look at me! Could an un-fine person do this?”

“ _Roman._ I’m Deceit.”  
Roman paused in his demonstration of ‘I’m perfectly fine’-ness to look at her. “Yes, I know. And I’m Roman.” 

“Roman. Deceit. _Deceit._ ”

He blinked at her, his brain still not catching the meaning of what she was saying. She groaned, putting her head in her hands.

“Your lies are giving me a _literal_ headache.” 

Ah. Oops. “Um… sorry?” Roman tried, offering her a halfhearted apologetic smile.

“Roman. Despite what you may think, I do care about what’s going on with you. It’s alright. You can tell me.” 

He froze, swallowing, staring resolutely at the floor, wondering if he stared hard enough he’d become the floor. And then he wouldn’t have to worry about anything anymore. He could become one with the soft, plush carpet. He gave her a painfully fake smile and shook his head.

“Actually, I can’t, Dee. I’m sorry.” 

“Would you rather talk to someone else about it? I could ask Virgil, you know he cares about you too, he hates to show it-”

“ _No_! God no. Not Virgil. I can’t- I can’t tell anyone. Not because I don’t want to, I _do_ , it’s eating me up inside and I want to tell someone, but I _can’t._ ”

Deceit pursed her lips, looking like she wanted to continue to protest, but she didn’t say anything. 

“Maybe someday I will. But not now. And not for a long time.”

“Always so dramatic, aren’t you?”

Roman frowned, not liking that very much. Dee’s tone had been teasing and light, but he still didn’t appreciate the words. “You don’t get it,” Roman muttered. 

“Well, no, I can’t very well get it if you don’t tell me what _it_ is.” 

A fair statement, Roman figured, although he wasn’t going to say that. “Whatever.” He didn’t want Dee to leave thinking he didn’t want to talk to her, didn’t want her to think he didn’t want to spend time with her, that he didn’t _love_ her, and… oh fuck. Did Roman love her? Was he in love with her? Oh no. Roman had never had a crush before and he had absolutely no idea how to handle it. He’d thought it was just a crush, but maybe he felt things more strongly than he’d realized. 

“Tell me what I can do to help you, Roman. You’re one of my only friends. I care about you.”

Roman had been right about crying again within ten minutes, because he was crying again. Deceit’s arms were around him instantly, holding him, and that was _even worse_ and it made Roman cry harder, sobbing into her shoulder, and it was so ironic because this was all Roman had ever wanted and it only made him feel terrible and he couldn’t have it, not the way he wanted it.

“Roman…” Deceit began, drawing soothing circles on his back with her fingers, “Let me help you.”

She was so kind, Roman never thought he’d use the word _kind_ to describe Deceit, but she was gentle and thoughtful, so much more than Roman had ever imagined she could be. She cared about Roman in a way Roman had never been cared for before and the only thing he wanted to do at the present moment was kiss her, kiss her and hold her tight until the end of time. But of course, he couldn’t do that, he couldn’t kiss her and betray both her and Virgil and lose the only people in his life who seemed to care about him. But he could think about kissing her.

“You can’t- you can’t do anything, Dee. It’s me. It’s only what I have to do.” He wondered what her lips felt like, cold probably, cold and smooth, like the scales on her fingers he’d only ever been able to touch once, cold like the wind on his back on that one lovely day he’d ridden on the back of Deceit’s motorcycle. He had to stop thinking about kissing Dee, he was thinking too hard about kissing her and now he was afraid he was going to actually do it. Which he couldn’t do. Still. Weren’t there any other topics he could think up? 

“Then I’ll stay here. If there isn’t anything I can say to help you, I’ll stay until you feel better.”

Bold of Deceit to assume that Roman could ever feel better if she continued to hold him like this. 

“You don’t have to do that,” Roman said softly, although he made no attempt at letting go of Deceit so she could leave. 

“No, I don’t. But I do have to be a good friend.”

Roman smiled despite himself, a thought occurred to him, something Deceit could do to make him feel better, but he didn’t want to ask it, he didn’t want her to have to do something like that. “You are a good friend,” Roman argued.

“I have absolutely no clue where you got that impression from, darling.” Dee was now petting Roman’s hair and it was terribly soothing. Terribly soothing in that it was relaxing and felt like the best thing he’d ever experienced, but it was so incredibly _wrong_ and it made Roman _hate_ himself. 

“And I’m a terrible friend,” Roman muttered, “because I’m going to ask you to do something for me. And I know you’ll hate it, because you hate doing it, and I know you hate doing it because you _told me once_ that you hated doing it, and I’m sorry, but-”

“ _Roman_ , tell me what it is already,” she said, and Roman was a hundred percent sure she was rolling her eyes.

“I- I want you to lie to me,” Roman said softly into Deceit’s ear, squeezing his eyes shut as he spoke. “And make me believe it.” 

“Roman, I-” 

“ _Please._ ”

A little over two weeks ago, Roman and Deceit had been watching every single _Saw_ movie (much to Virgil’s chagrin, which is why he hadn’t been present at the time), and Roman had been showing off his abilities to summon things. Okay, okay, Deceit had mentioned that she thought the reverse bear trap was cool, and she wanted to have one so she could put it on Logan to see if she could get him to freak out. And so, naturally, Roman had made one appear. Deceit had been thoroughly impressed with its authenticity (also its function, she insisted Roman put it on a mannequin to try it out to see if it worked), and that had all resulted in a conversation about their abilities. Which was what was really the point of Roman’s exposition here--although the _actual_ point should be that Deceit now had a _fucking reverse bear trap_ somewhere in her room, that was probably the most important thing to glean from all of this, because Deceit had a _fucking reverse bear trap somewhere in her room and Roman had willingly given it to her because he was stupidly in love and that had probably been a terrible idea now that he thought about it_. 

But whatever. The _point_ was that Roman had found out how far the extent of Deceit’s abilities to lie went. She could convince anyone of anything, for a short amount of time, at least. 

And also that fucking reverse bear trap. No one better forget that. Or annoy Deceit ever again. Or let Roman get Deceit a present while watching a _Saw_ movie. 

“What do you want me to tell you, Roman?” 

Maybe make him forget the fact that Deceit had a reverse bear trap because apparently that was causing him a lot of angst- “Can you tell me… make me believe that I’m good. That I’m capable. And tell me that…” he paused, wondering if he should even go that far, but Roman wasn’t one to only take things halfway, if he did something, he did it all, “Tell me that you love me.” Love could be platonic, Deceit didn’t need to know what exactly Roman meant by that statement. 

Dee made a small noise before pulling back, looking him in the eye. “I can’t do that,” she said softly, brushing out his hair with her fingers. 

“ _Please,_ Dee, _please._ It’s the only thing I want you to do, I swear, I won’t ask-”

“Roman, I would if I could. But I physically _can’t_. I can’t lie to you about that because it’s true _._ ”

“No it _isn’t,_ it isn’t true, Dee, please-” Roman very much wanted to smack her arm for telling him that, but he wasn’t sure he had the energy. 

“I can only tell you the truth. You’re a wonderful person, Roman. You trusted me enough to let me in, and enough to let me be your friend, and you’ve only ever been kind to me. If not a little insensitive sometimes. A tad bit oblivious to basic human body language and subtext. But that’s what I love about you. You’re so different from all the other sides, you feel your emotions to their fullest extent, and… that’s something I can admire. You always know what you’re feeling. You always act on your feelings.” 

Roman had to laugh at that one, shaking his head. “I don’t. I absolutely don’t. I should have, and now it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?” 

“It doesn’t matter what it’s too late for if it’s too late. And it _is_ too late.” Roman tightened his hold around Deceit, refusing to let her go for any reason whatsoever, and she would have to deal with it because Roman needed comfort. Not that Deceit seemed to mind, as she’d made no indication of leaving. 

Dee sighed, evidently giving up on trying to get Roman to tell her what was wrong. “And you’re stubborn as all hell,” she added, “which, I suppose, could be a point in your favor if you look at it the right way.” 

Roman chuckled, wiping his tears away. “I hate you.”

“Love you too, darling,” Dee said quietly, watching his face for a moment before reaching up and helping him wipe away his tears. Roman shuddered at her sudden touch, because, _hello_ , she still hadn’t put her gloves on yet and the feeling of her scales against his cheek was? A thing? A thing that was happening? Wow, it was a thing, and it was happening. And Roman was (surprise, surprise) still fucking in love. 

He really was starting to feel like he was too close to Deceit, too close emotionally, he’d told her more than he’d told anyone else, too close physically, he could see the ridges on her face where her human skin stopped and the scales began, and he only had to lean an inch further forward to be able to rest his face on her cheek, too close. Far, far too close by far. And yet, he still had yet to lean back.

“You know, before I ever even spoke to you for the first time, you were always my favorite,” Deceit said, smiling at him. “Of course, I thought you were an idiot, but I always thought we had so much in common. Even though your overt preference for Disney is… questionable, you’re the only one who can appreciate the theater.”

“Hey, Disney musicals are-”

“Yes, yes, let’s praise the magic rat, I know-” 

“Mickey is a _mouse_ , it’s in his _name_ -” Roman argued, having not realized that Dee was mocking him. 

“Awfully convenient for him. Sounds like something a rat would say.”

“What does that even-” Roman crossed his arms, although he immediately missed being able to touch Deceit, he felt that the arm crossing was necessary for establishing his annoyance at Deceit’s insistence that Mickey Mouse was a rat. “You’re trying to annoy me, aren’t you?” He asked, and now he was pouting. Very mature of him.

“Wrong,” Deceit leaned forward and booped him on the nose (Roman at that point felt like he might spontaneously combust because his _nose_ had been _booped_ by _Deceit_ ), “I’m trying to cheer you up.”

“By annoying me?”

“By _distracting_ you,” Dee corrected. 

“So you don’t actually think Mickey Mouse is a rat?” 

“I never said that.” 

“So you think he _is_?” Roman asked incredulously, still pouting. Maturely.

“I didn’t say that either.” 

Roman huffed in annoyance. “You are infuriating.” 

“But you love it,” Dee said, winking at him, and once again Roman was resisting the other to pull her smug face over by her cape and kiss her until she couldn’t tease him anymore. Oh no, now he was thinking those stupid kissing thoughts again. 

“I do not,” Roman insisted (he did).

“You do.”

“Not.” 

“Do. Admit it.” 

Yet again, Roman huffed in annoyance, pointedly looking away from Deceit to signify the fact that he absolutely did not like Dee’s adorable flirtatious teases and they were in fact the worst thing ever. No other form of torture could make Roman feel more pain than Dee made him feel by harmlessly flirting with him. Except maybe that reverse bear trap. 

“Admit it,” Dee poked him with her long nail, making Roman look at her. She had that knees-weak smile on her face, and her tongue was poking out of her mouth. Was Roman only now realizing she had a forked tongue? Holy shit. She had a forked tongue and that was highly important information for Roman’s brain to have. For no particular reason. He wouldn’t be thinking about it. At night. When he was alone in bed. Doing things that definitely shouldn’t be done while thinking about someone who was supposedly your friend. Because Roman wouldn’t do that. Absolutely not. He’d never even think of doing something like that, what kind of person do you take him for?

Instead of admitting it (mostly because it had completely slipped Roman’s mind what he was supposed to be admitting to because he’d been thinking about that snake tongue), he chose to reach out and poke said snake tongue. Why? Who knows. He hadn’t thought it through. 

Dee blinked, and then blinked again, and then her tongue poked out of her mouth even further and she laughed, showing off all of her sharp fangs as well as exactly how long her tongue was (it was very long, which was also important information for Roman to have). 

“I…” Roman began, trying to come up with a reason as to why he’d done that, but he was coming up empty, so instead he laughed along with Dee, feeling much better than he had been roughly five minutes ago. 

Even though he was primarily feeling better for the sole reason that Deceit was with him, and Virgil wasn’t there at the moment, so Roman didn’t feel like an awkward third wheel and could instead pretend that he was spending time with his partner, and that his partner was Dee, and everything was wonderful. He and Deceit really did have a lot in common, didn’t they? They both lived in fantasy, pretending and imagining things better than they were in order to be happier, to keep their heads above the water. He wondered if Deceit ever felt the way Roman did, that her life never went the way she wanted it to, that she was stuck in some sort of endless monotony, living life in a way that was _fine_ because it was familiar, it was comforting, but it wasn’t what she _really wanted,_ and if she ever did feel like that… he wondered if that was why she’d gone back to Virgil. 

They weren’t exactly the pinnacle of a happy couple. Sure, they didn’t fight, or argue much at all, but they didn’t do much of anything. They simply existed in each other’s company, it seemed. Within this one conversation Roman and Deceit had had, Deceit had told Roman she loved him more times than Roman had ever heard her tell it to Virgil. Maybe it wasn’t Roman’s place to judge their relationship, especially considering he’d never been in a relationship himself, as well as the fact that Virgil and Deceit had known each other their whole lives, perhaps romantic gestures and declarations of love were no longer necessary for them.

Roman really had no idea, and ultimately decided he was likely trying to find flaws in their relationship to serve his own agenda, not out of real concern for either of them. So he chose to stop thinking about it. It wasn’t his place, they seemed happy (he supposed, he could never be sure with Deceit, her emotions were impossible to read), so that was that. He wasn’t going to go around being a homewrecker without appropriate reasoning as to why he wrecked a perfectly content home.


	7. I’m Not Coming Out Tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You call me baby, you call me love, still I’m not sure who you dream of at night when you turn on to your side. Oh moon, don’t bother coming out tonight. I used to love you more with each day, but now I fear that it’s going away._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uH fuck i dont have a whimsical summary prepared bUt,,,,,,anxceit?? softness??? and also??? anxceit??? angst??? uh??? roman is a Fool???? yeah that seems good.

Roman may have been right about his previous assumptions regarding Virgil and Dee’s relationship, even if his assumptions were rooted in the fact that he had a rather large crush on Dee. Maybe he had been right that they only gravitated towards each other for familiarity and the comfort of home, and the fact that they had both been so lonely without each other that maybe the second they made up (if you could even call it that), they hadn’t even had a real conversation before rushing into each other’s arms and pretending things were back to normal.

But they weren’t back to normal. Virgil and Deceit had drifted apart in ways neither of them had meant to or even realized. They had been forced to grow without each other, Deceit alone, and Virgil with new friends who had cared for him and loved him without knowing of the mistake he’d made in his past. Dee had grown bitter and colder in that time apart, and Virgil had grown warmer, kinder. And they couldn’t quite get used to each other anymore. 

There was a delicate balance they were forced to stay between, and that delicate balance was disturbed nearly every day with petty arguments and arbitrary disturbances. Always when they were alone, and that was another thi-

“And _that’s_ another thing! You never talk to me when we’re around anyone else, and then all of a sudden once we’re alone, all you do is argue with me!”

Deceit cleared her throat, crossing her legs as she sat on the edge of Virgil’s bed. “I’m not arguing with you, Virgil. You’re the only one arguing.” Apparently she hadn’t realized that statement in itself was argumentative. 

“Well fine, maybe you don’t argue, but you… you act like you don’t trust me, like you don’t believe anything I say, and I want to know what the hell I can _do_ to get you to trust me again. I’ve been _trying,_ Dee, I love you, and I know you love me.” 

Deceit clenched her teeth, responding nearly silently. “You don’t know that.”

“What?” Virgil stopped his angst pacing to stare at her, looking like he’d been slapped. “What did you say?” 

“I said, you don’t know that. You don’t know how I feel.” Deceit’s calm tone was endlessly infuriating to Virgil, but he prevented himself from getting too angry. 

“You told me you did. You said you still loved me, Dee. You- you said it first, before I even-”

“Maybe I was lonely,” Dee interrupted, looking down at her hands resting in her lap. “Maybe we both were.” Well, that was something Virgil had spent a good two months trying not to think. And now here it was, ruined for him. All he’d wanted was to be able to let things go back to how they were before, for Dee to be as kind and sensitive towards Virgil as she had before, instead of being so distant, and Virgil was nearly sure Dee was wishing Virgil wasn’t so clingy. Not that she’d ever say that; she might have become more emotionally distant, but Virgil knew he would always be able trust Deceit enough to know she would never insult him intentionally or say a word bad about him. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be thinking it. 

“Of course we were lonely, Dee. We didn’t have each other. You always said… you always said that we were meant to be together. That if either of us got lost, we’d always find each other. We were meant to. We were meant to-”

“And look how that turned out,” Deceit snapped. “I tried to find you and you didn’t even want to be found.” 

Virgil visibly flinched at that and Deceit muttered a quiet apology. 

“I thought you said you forgave me for that,” Virgil said quietly, sitting next to her on the bed, copying her seating position and staring down at his hands in his lap.

“I think we both know my forgiveness is conditional,” Deceit responded.

“Then it’s not really forgiveness, is it?” 

Finally, Deceit chose to look at Virgil. “I suppose not.” 

There was a silence as the words hovered around them both, the meaning not wanting to sink in all the way. Virgil opened his mouth to say something and then closed his mouth again, taking a deep breath. On some level, he had known this would happen. But he hadn’t really wanted to actually think about it.

“But we both knew that, too.” 

“I told you I didn’t expect you to forgive me, that I wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t,” Virgil said. “But you lied anyway.”

“Yes, that’s what I do. I lie and I’m not sure why you’re so surprised by that.” 

Virgil sighed, shaking his head. “You didn’t have to. I would never want you to try and convince yourself of something that isn’t true.” 

“It doesn’t matter what I did or didn’t try to convince myself of, seeing as it didn’t work anyway,” Deceit said tiredly, without much conviction at all. “How many times can we talk about this before we realize we're saying the same things over and over again and they still have no meaning?” 

“I think what you mean is how long can we explicitly _not_ talk about this before we realize we’re…” Virgil trailed off, wondering if it was even worth it to say what he was thinking. 

“I love you, Virgil. You know that, at least, isn’t a lie I’m forcing myself to believe, don’t you?” Deceit finally said. She was rubbing at her hands, picking at the ridges on her scales, that same nervous habit she’d always had. Virgil placed his hand over hers, preventing her from picking at her skin. 

“I know. But I also know that doesn’t mean anything. I love you, too. Doesn’t mean we’re…” yet again, Virgil closed his mouth, that same phrase sticking in the back of his throat painfully. 

“I know.” Deceit turned her hand over to hold Virgil’s, closing her eyes. “But I don’t want to lose this. Us. Not again.” 

“Dee, I’m still lost. You never got me back. I left and I made that choice, no matter how much I regret it, it happened. I can’t take it back and you can never trust me again.” 

“To an extent, I can,” Deceit said quietly, almost like she was trying her best to pretend Virgil was wrong. “If we don’t talk about it, I don’t have to think about it, and things can be the way they were.” 

“So we’re going to ignore it, aren’t we?” Virgil asked, and if his tone had been tired and resigned before, it was impossibly exhausted now. 

“Or we can talk about it.” 

“And go around and around in circles until one of us snaps?” 

“Yes, that.”

“I’ll choose ignoring it,” Virgil said, offering Dee a small, self deprecating smile. It wasn’t healthy, and Virgil should protest it more, and they should stop, and there were so many _shoulds_ and _shouldn'ts_ and Virgil was having a hard time caring about any of them at the moment. 

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” He asked, resting his head on Dee’s shoulder. “You’re Deceit, but I’m the one who betrayed _your_ trust.” 

“Hilarious,” Deceit said, wrapping an arm around Virgil. “Tell me I can stay in your room tonight?” 

Virgil nuzzled his face into her neck, causing her to let out a little breath of laughter. “Of course,” he whispered, closing his eyes. Maybe ignoring things was a good idea, actually. Because it seemed that they were always the happiest when they were in denial about whatever this relationship was. 

“I think Roman suspects we’re having problems,” Deceit said softly, as she moved to lie down on Virgil’s bed, gently pulling him on top of her.

Virgil rolled his eyes, playing with the chain from Deceit’s cape as he rested his head on her chest. “Only because he’s nosy. I think he lives for our relationship drama. Another similarity between you two.”

Deceit gave an offended gasp, even though not long ago she had been talking to Roman about how much they had in common. “I resent the implication that I have something in common with Roman.”

“Liar.” Virgil poked her cheek. “You like him. You always have.” 

“Whatever. The point, obviously, is that I only live for relationship drama when it isn’t _my_ relationship drama.” 

“That only makes you have more in common with Roman.” 

Dee stuck her tongue out and licked Virgil’s hand before he could poke her again. “Shush,” she said, although it may have been a normal hiss with no attempt at actual words, Virgil was never quite sure. 

“Don’t hiss at me.” 

She responded by hissing. 

“Rude,” Virgil said matter-of-factly, although he was hiding a small smile behind his arm. It wasn’t his fault that Dee could be charming even at her most infuriating. Especially at her most infuriating. 

“I know, I’m terrible. I can’t believe you let me in here,” Deceit said mischievously, sitting up a little and pulling Virgil up with her before switching their positions, flipping him over onto his back. 

Virgil made a surprised noise before laughing, wrapping his arms around Deceit’s neck and pulling her down. They stared at each other, Deceit’s eyelashes fluttering as she blinked. 

“Are you planning on kissing me?” Virgil asked, raising an eyebrow expectantly. 

“I was going to ask you the same thing.” 

“Well, you’re the one who flipped me over, so I was expecting you to be the one to kiss me.” 

“Maybe you should’ve taken initiative when you pulled me down,” Deceit argued.

“Are we really arguing about which one of us should kiss the other first?” Virgil was almost about to kiss Dee now, simply to stop their pointless back and forth.

“Apparently so.” 

“We really do need to have a conversation,” Virgil said, rolling his eyes. Dee responded with a nonchalant shrug. 

“I can’t help that I’m strong-willed and passionate.”

“I think it’s pronounced _petty_.” 

“Aw, you think I’m pretty?” Dee asked teasingly, purposefully fluttering her eyelashes this time. 

“That's not what I said and you know it. C’mere.” Virgil made the ultimate decision to lose the ‘who will kiss the other first’ argument by choosing to be the one to kiss Dee first, although she didn’t seem to have any plans of rubbing it in his face. 

In fact, her only plans seemed to be melting into Virgil’s arms and making what was possibly the sweetest and most adorable hissing noise Virgil had ever heard in his life. And this was why he was still ignoring the large, glaring number of issues in his relationship with Dee, because of moments like these, when it felt like things were back to normal again, when they didn’t have anything to worry about. Virgil had always wondered if Deceit could consciously tell when she was lying, or if she simply acted on instinct and didn’t even consider her words before she spoke. 

She’d said once that lying was second nature to her, that it was ingrained so deeply into her mind she couldn’t switch it off. Virgil had never minded before, and he didn’t really mind now, but it was something he thought about. Before, their relationship had been built on trust earned over years of love and support, but now it was unstable, bound to crack at any second, and the problem was that Virgil didn’t _know_ anymore. It wasn’t a question of whether or not he could trust Deceit, that much was obvious. He would trust her with his life, and she might be petty and argumentative, she might not be able to forgive him for what he’d done to her, but she’d never do anything to make Virgil lose his trust in her. 

He didn’t know if Deceit trusted him enough. Enough for what, he wasn’t sure, but… enough. Enough to believe that Virgil wouldn’t walk out on her again, enough to feel confident that he wouldn’t vanish into thin air again without a goodbye. Enough to believe that Virgil really did love her, wouldn’t trade her away for anything, because, to be perfectly frank, Virgil didn’t know if he _wouldn’t_ trade her away for anything. Because he already had. Who was to say he wouldn’t do it again? It was impossible to blame Dee for not trusting him, and it was nearly as impossible to not get defensive and make an attempt at explaining away what he’d done and sweeping it under the rug. 

At the present moment though, Deceit didn’t seem to be thinking about any of this, so Virgil decided to follow her lead and bask in the infinite amount of kisses he was being given on his face, occasionally making giggle-adjacent noises when Dee’s hair trailed across his neck, tickling him. 

“You’re adorable,” Dee muttered, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead before pausing to stare at him, brushing his bangs out of his eyes with her finger.

“Am not,” Virgil argued, wondering how noticeable his blush was (it was very noticeable, considering how pale he was). 

“You are.” She kissed him slowly, hand trailing down to fiddle with the zipper of his hoodie, before pulling at it, pausing to look at him to make sure what she was doing was okay. Virgil gave her a quick nod, letting her take it off and watching as she folded it, placing it on the edge of the bed before going back to her previous task of kissing Virgil.

Things were going altogether quite well (Virgil had even gotten Dee to take her hat off after insisting that bowler hats were not appropriate attire for making out), so naturally, it was time for someone to come along and cause some form of mayhem. 

Virgil’s bedroom door swung open, Roman flouncing in in his usual dramatic fashion, ready to announce some new way he was going to turn Virgil’s life upside-down, he was sure. “Virgil, I- _ah_!” 

Honestly, Roman’s high-pitch scream hadn’t felt entirely necessary. At least Virgil and Dee were both still fully clothed, it wasn’t like they’d even been doing anything that would sear scarring images into Roman’s brain. Well, except maybe the fact that Virgil’s arms were nearly sheet white and Roman had never seen him without long sleeves on before, which may have been emotionally scarring. 

“Jesus _Christ,_ Roman!” Deceit yelled, toppling off of Virgil and rolling away from him, nearly rolling all the way off the bed. “Make a fist, pound the door, it’s called knocking!”

“Tell me when you’re decent,” Roman said, covering his eyes dramatically, to which Virgil threw his pillow at him in response.

“We were fully clothed when you came barging in, it’s not my fault you have the maturity of a-” Virgil began, but stopped when Dee rested a hand on his shoulder. He crossed his arms after snatching his hoodie up from where Dee had set it on the edge of the bed and throwing it around his shoulders. 

Roman uncovered his eyes, looking far more cranky than he had any right to be considering he’d been the one to walk in on Virgil and Dee unannounced, but Roman always seemed to be cranky lately, and Virgil had decided not to take it personally. 

“What do you need, Roman?” Virgil asked, sighing. 

“You know, I- I think I’ll, I think I’d rather- I’m gonna- gonna go.” And Roman was gone again, practically tripping on his feet as he ran out the door, and Virgil was reminded of how Roman seemed to always be running out of the room in apparent distress whenever Virgil and Deceit kissed. How odd. It was probably because Roman was immature, Virgil chose not to dwell on it. 

“He’s so odd,” Deceit commented offhandedly, tilting her head as she watched the door swing shut behind Roman as he sped out. “Maybe I don’t understand how feelings work, but he seems to feel every emotion humanly possible. All the time.”

“Yeah, he’s weird,” Virgil agreed, before taking Dee’s arm and pulling her back down on the bed. “But where were we?”

“Hmm…” Dee turned her attention back to Virgil, running her hand across his face and holding the back of his neck, “I think… we were somewhere…” she leaned forward, kissing Virgil as they fell back on the bed, “right around here.”

And then the door flew open again. “No, you know what, I have to have this conversation now, Virgi-”

“ _Jesus fucking Christ, Roman_!” 

“It’s not my fault you can’t lock doors! If you’re gonna be fucking, you should lock your doors!”

“We aren’t-!”

“It’s fine, kitten,” Deceit interrupted, standing and adjusting her cape, picking her hat up off the floor with a dramatic flourish, “I’ll let you and Roman talk, since it’s apparently vastly important.”

“If this is about your _Nightmare Before Christmas_ DVD, I swear to god I don’t have it,” Virgil grumbled. 

“This is vastly more important than a DVD copy of a classic Disney holiday musical which you _most definitely_ do have in your room because _you_ are the only one who ever borrows it and it’s been missing for over three months,” Roman responded, and Deceit, who had been standing behind him at the time, very dramatically rolled her eyes, before leaving, shutting the door behind her. 

“Why can’t you make a new one? You made Dee a reverse bear trap for god’s sake, which, by the way, thanks so much for that, I’m really glad out of all the things you could’ve given my slightly diabolical and very unpredictable girlfriend, you chose a reverse bear trap. A great idea. You’re a paragon of wisdom.” 

“It’s actually Deceit I need to talk to you about,” Roman said, and Virgil’s eyes narrowed. 

“Why?” Virgil zipped up his hoodie and began fiddling with it, biting his lip. “I’m already tired of hearing about how Deceit isn’t good enough for me from Patton, I’m not hearing it from you, too.”

Roman shook his head, looking almost as nervous as Virgil was. “It’s not that. It’s…” he paused, second and third guessing his decision. He’d spent a long time considering what to do and what not to do, whether he was acting out of jealousy and pettiness or out of genuine care for his friends and wanting them to be happy, and he’d come to the decision that he should talk to Virgil. Talking to Deceit would feel too self-serving, so he’d eliminated that option. 

“Can I sit down?” He asked instead, trying to delay the inevitable for as long as possible.


	8. I Can't Bring Myself To Smile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Where should I go to look, to find, a new love? I wrote the book on how to be lonely and all the volumes one through ninety-nine. Oh, don’t ask me why, for I could not tell you if I tried. That’s why I turned away and slowly died inside._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rewriting this summary to state that this chapter caused me much consternation in that it alerted me of the disgusting and racist origins of the word ‘picnic’ in America so I had to change it up a lil because goddamn I will never be using that word again. I’ll attach a link to the article I read about it at the end notes.

“I don’t think you and Dee should be together,” Roman said abruptly, finally biting the bullet and giving in to what he’d been trying and failing to say for the past ten minutes.

Virgil blinked. His mouth opened and then closed again. When he finally spoke, Roman could tell he was gritting his teeth. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“No, maybe I don’t. I usually don’t,” Roman agreed, scooting a little further away from Virgil in case he pounced and scratched Roman’s eyes out. “But then you can reassure me.”

“Roman, I’m anxiety, I don’t _reassure_ people.” 

“Well, then, be Virgil for a minute.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Virgil asked, crossing his arms.

“I mean you’re not _just_ anxiety, don’t you-” Roman paused, and then decided he may as well go all the way, “don’t you ever listen to Deceit?” 

“ _Excuse_ me?” 

“I mean-! She’s always talking about how we aren’t all… all one thing that we’re supposed to be. We’re individuals.”

“No, that’s… that’s just Dee. Dee with her individualism and going out in the world, and being her own person. That’s not-”

“That’s all of us, we’re all individual people, but that’s not even the _point_ I’m trying to make, so can’t you please try to listen to me?” 

It wasn’t very often Roman was this insistent on anything, so Virgil sighed in resignation, shrugging. “Fine. What’s the point, then?” 

“You and Dee. You’re only together because it’s comfortable, familiar. It’s what you know. I’m not… I’m not saying that’s inherently a bad thing, but I- I feel partially responsible because you seem to think I tried setting you two up-”

“You did. You literally did set us up,” Virgil interrupted, looking up at him.

“I absolutely did not, I was only trying to-” Roman broke off, throwing his hands in the air exasperatedly. “And you’ve changed the subject again! This wasn’t what I was trying to talk to you about!” 

“Then get to the damn point. In case you couldn’t tell, you were interrupting something important.”

Roman took a deep breath, making it his ultimate goal to not yell at Virgil for being obstinate. “I need you to answer a question for me. Why are you and Dee together?”

Virgil didn’t answer the question right away, wondering whether or not he could get away with murdering Roman and hiding his body under his bed. He bit his lip, chewing on it until it started hurting

“I…” It shouldn’t be a hard question to answer, but it was one Virgil had been asking himself for weeks and still had yet to puzzle out. He went back to chewing on his lip.

Roman sighed, as if Virgil had proved his entire point by not being able to answer, which he had. “Is it because you want to be with her, or is it because it’s familiar?” 

“I don’t see why those two things can’t both be true at the same time.” 

“Are they?” 

Virgil had never been great at lying. Not even to himself. Which was why he’d been so resolute in his attempts to not think about this. “I love Dee,” he finally said, which was decidedly not an answer to anything Roman had asked. 

“Good for you, but are you _happy_?” 

Well, Roman sure excelled at asking questions Virgil didn’t know how to answer. “How am I supposed to know?” He snapped. 

Roman closed his eyes, frowning. This was quite a bit harder than he’d expected it to be. “Sometimes, you two look happy. And I can tell you really do love each other, Virgil, but that doesn’t guarantee you’re actually content in your relationship. I can’t tell you whether you’re happy or not.”

“If you can’t tell, why did you decide to barge in here and make it your business?” 

“Because you’re my _friend,_ Virgil. I want to know if you’re doing okay.” Roman’s tone was genuine, and maybe the sincerity of his words bothered Virgil more than the actual words themselves, because he shifted uncomfortably, turning away.

“Dee would never treat me badly,” Virgil said, as if that were the end of it and he had answered all of Roman’s questions (it was not and he had not). 

“That’s not what I’m asking.” 

Virgil laughed, although Roman failed to see exactly what was so amusing about this situation. “Do you think I don’t _know_ what you’re asking? Fuck, I know exactly what you’re asking, and you’d think that after you had to repeat yourself about five times, you’d know what my answer to your question is.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to say it out loud.”

His voice cracked as he spoke and Roman was not well equipped to handle a crying Virgil, so he placed a reassuring hand on his back, trying to come up with something to keep him from having a breakdown. 

“You don’t have to. I’m only trying to help you. You know that, right?”

Nodding after a second, Virgil took another breath, inhaling slowly and holding it in before exhaling in one quick _puff_. “If you really want to help me, there is something you can do for me.”

“I’ll do anything for you. You’re my friend.” Roman smiled at him, squeezing his shoulder reassuringly.

“I need you to… break up with Dee for me.”

“I’ll do anything for you _except_ for that,” Roman amended after a moment’s silence. There was no way in hell he was going to be the one to tell his crush that her boyfriend was breaking up with her. That was wrong. On so many levels. 

“Roman, _please,”_ Virgil begged, looking up at him pleadingly. He wasn’t as convincing with his puppy dog eyes as Dee was (although that, Roman realized, was not what he should be thinking about at the moment). “You don’t understand. I’ve already let down Dee once, I can’t… I can’t do that to her again. I can’t do it myself.” 

Now that was quite a large flaw in Virgil’s logic. It was such a large flaw that even Roman noticed it, which meant it must’ve been a logic hole the size of the Grand Canyon. “Won’t me breaking up with her for you be doing exactly that? I thought the whole reason she was mad at you was because you left without _telling her yourself_ , but now you’re asking me to tell her you’re leaving because _you can’t tell her yourself?_ ”

“This is different.” 

“ _How_ , Virgil, _how?_ ”

“Because Dee trusts you more than she trusts me,” Virgil said, and the words were painful to say out loud, to truly admit to himself. “But I know her. She won’t resent me for this, she knows _me_. Knows that I physically can’t do this, because-”

“Because you’re a coward?” Roman finished, a little pettily. Okay, a lot pettily. He’d been completely supportive of Virgil until this exact moment, and now he decided was the time to be petty about this. He felt it was warranted. Dee deserved at least an in-person break up, even if, as Virgil seemed to think, the feelings that they should break up were mutual.

“Because…” Virgil glared at him, smacking his hand off his shoulder. “Because I can’t let her down again.”

That really rubbed Roman the wrong way. Granted, he’d already been rubbed the wrong way, but now he _really_ was. “ _You_ never let her down, Virgil. Your absence let her down. You never actually faced what you did and fixed it, you can’t say you’ve already let her down once when what you mean is, ‘I was a coward when I left her without saying goodbye, and I think I’ll keep that pattern going because I’m still a coward and I’ll leave her again without saying goodbye’.”

“I’m not-” Virgil began.

“No, no, you can’t convince me to do this for you. You need to do this yourself. I’ll support you from afar, you know, offer my condolences, take you both out for ice cream--separately, of course--or at least, whatever the snake-appropriate version of ice cream is, et cetera, but I will _not_ break up with her for you.”

Virgil groaned, flopping forward on his bed and landing face down on his pillow, which Roman knew meant he was close to winning this argument. “You know I fucking hate it when you’re right,” Virgil complained, his voice muffled.

“Well, I am often right, so that must be why you constantly tell me how much you hate me.”

“I hate you,” Virgil said matter-of-factly.

“Case in point.” Roman placed his hand back on Virgil’s shoulder, patting it reassuringly, although now that Virgil was lying behind him, it made it a bit awkward. Oh, the things he did for friendship. “So…” he said slowly, trying to figure out how to broach the subject of exactly how Virgil was planning on breaking up with Deceit without ruining their friendship. Or perhaps their friendship would be ruined anyway and Roman’s previous attempt (which had led to their dating) would end up meaningless because their relationship was broken beyond repair. But it was better to know that now than later, right?

“I don’t know, Roman,” Virgil said, before Roman had even gotten the words out of his mouth. Was there really a good way to break up with someone? Especially when breaking up with someone you loved.

********

In-depth internet research (Wikihow) had informed Virgil upon the best ways to break up with someone. Apparently breaking up required an ‘open and honest conversation’, which Virgil didn’t particularly like, but whatever. He’d invited Dee on a sort of outdoor midnight snack (perhaps because Virgil was notorious for snacking at midnight), or, more accurately, Roman had. He’d organized the whole thing, despite Virgil’s insistence that he really didn’t need to, Roman had a habit of making things much more romantic than they needed to be. And romance was the absolute last thing he needed to be concerned about at the moment. 

It wasn’t _too_ romantic. There weren’t any unnecessary candles or otherwise overtly date-like paraphernalia, but it still felt odd. 

“Virgil,” Deceit said quietly, watching as he repeatedly checked the basket Roman had filled over and over again like he was forgetting something, even though he knew he wasn’t. He didn’t answer, chewing on his lip and making thoughtful _hm_ sounds.

“Virgil,” she repeated, placing a hand on his shoulder. He jumped, finally stopping in his actions.

“Sorry,” he said, sitting back on his heels and taking in a couple deep breaths. He was almost certain she knew he was hiding something, she always knew when he was. That was in her job title, of course. But she could read Virgil even better than that, probably even knew exactly what he was hiding from her. 

“This was a mistake,” Dee finally said, after a second of silence. She was staring up at the sky, looking at the stars with a soft gaze that made Virgil’s heart melt, but he still breathed a deep sigh of relief at her words.

“Oh, my god, I’m so glad we’re in the same boat, Dee. I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you for so long, and I’ve reestablished my life and gotten a whole new set of friends, us jumping back into this was the _stupidest_ thing we could’ve done, and-” he rambled, oblivious to Dee’s look of confusion at his words, more focused on how he hadn’t been forced to be the one to broach the subject.

Dee stared at him in horror for several long seconds. “I meant… the location we picked. You can’t see the stars as well from here with the trees blocking… blocking the view.”

Allow Virgil several long seconds to process that. Crickets were literally and metaphorically chirping. Allow him several more seconds to process. And then some more. And then the realization came to him.

“Well, see, I- I hadn’t finished yet, I was-” Virgil rushed to correct himself, “after I was finished playing Devil’s Advocate, I was-”

“Virgil, don’t _insult_ me, that’s how you really feel, isn’t it?” 

He shouldn’t lie to Deceit. Actually, he really _couldn’t_ , it’d be completely useless to try. “I’m- I’m sorry, Dee. It is.”

She was crying. Dee was crying, and Virgil had made her cry, and there was nothing worse than that. Nothing worse had ever occurred in his entire life, actually. 

“I’m so sorry, Dee, I’m so- I hurt you again, I never meant to hurt you, I never did, and I don’t blame you if you’re mad at me,” Virgil said, hesitantly placing an arm on her back as she curled up. She didn’t pull away, so Virgil counted that as a good thing.

“I’m not mad at you,” she said finally, her voice a little muffled as she wiped away tears on her cape. “I’m mad at me. I don’t even know what I’m doing here, I’ve- I’ve been so lonely for the last year, and when I- and when I finally was able to have a real conversation with you, it was like a life preserver.”

Virgil pulled Dee into his arms, hugging her tightly, shaking his head. 

“I always thought of myself as an independent person, but the truth is, Virgil, I’m _afraid._ I’m alone and I’m afraid. And I guess that’s why I convinced myself I was still in love with you.”

“You mean you’re not?” Virgil had known this, on some level, even if he’d tried not to think about it too hard.

“No, I’m not,” Dee said, sighing. Virgil wondered if she would say anything else, but she remained quiet. That is, until she started crying again, and Virgil held her closer.

“Dee,” he said softly, moving his hands to her cheeks on either side and gently pulling her face up level with his. “Dee, you shouldn’t be mad at yourself. Look at you. You’re smart and strong-willed, and…” searching the Virgil dictionary for ‘compliments to give Deceit that aren’t dumb as hell’. “Dynamic?” Virgil wasn’t even sure he knew what dynamic meant. “And beautiful, obviously.”

Dee gave him a small smile as he brushed away a couple of her tears with his thumb. “I know you’re lonely, and…” He tried to remember the things the internet (and, unfortunately, Roman) had told him about breakups. “And I won’t say anything as cliche as ‘someday you’ll find someone’, but I know you, and I know this: I know no matter what the future holds for you, you’ll be able to handle it.” He couldn’t think of any other motivational words, so he stayed quiet, waiting for Dee to speak again, or to simply remain silently in his arms the rest of the night. He’d be perfectly content with either. 

“Thank you, Virgil,” Dee finally said, her voice quiet. 

“You don’t have anything to thank me for,” Virgil responded, brushing a hand through her hair. “If anything, I should be thanking you, for even giving me a second chance. Even if it was ‘conditional’, like you said before.”

“My forgiveness was conditional,” Dee corrected. “But I want to tell you, it isn’t conditional anymore.”

“You don’t have to say that. Especially not now. You don’t have to convince me of that. It’s okay, Dee.”

“I’m not trying to convince you of anything, Virgil. You can always tell when I’m lying anyway, can’t you?” Dee asked.

“Well, I did get pretty good at it,” Virgil said, smiling. “After you told me all the tricks to watch out for. Unless, of course, all those tricks were lies.”

Dee laughed a little, shaking her head. “I guess you’ll never really know, will you?”

Virgil joined her in her laughter. “This mystery goes all the way to the top.” He continued laughing, shaking his head and giving Dee a light kiss on her cheek. “It’d be a shame to waste all this work Roman put in for us, wouldn’t it?” He asked, looking back over to the basket he had yet to finish unpacking.

“Roman did all this?” Dee blinked, sitting up straighter.

Virgil nodded in answer, letting her out of the hug to finish with the basket. “He seems overly invested in our happiness.” 

“He’s your friend, Virgil. Of course he’s invested in your happiness.” 

Frowning, Virgil glanced over at her as he handed over a glass of wine to her. “He’s your friend, too. I’ve known him longer than you have, but he seems like he cares a lot more about you than he does about me.” 

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

Virgil gestured to the laid out food, shrugging. “He didn’t do stuff like this for me until you showed up.”

“He probably feels guilty, since he was the one who got us into this in the first place, trying to set us up.” 

“Actually, he wasn’t trying to set us up. At least that’s what he told me. I think he’s stupid.” 

Dee clucked her tongue disapprovingly, shaking her head. “Always so mean, aren’t you, kitten?” 

Virgil was never going to stop blushing at that nickname, was he? “Well, he was mean to me first. Besides, he’s… well, I don’t really know, but he likes you better than he does me, that much I can guarantee you.” 

“It’s the drama, Virgil. You don’t appreciate the art of the theater, you could never truly understand us,” Dee said, nodding sagely, which only made Virgil laugh again.

“Still. I’ve never seen him act the way he acts around you around anyone else before. He’s weird.” 

Dee shrugged. “I cannot believe we’re discussing the intricacies of Roman’s personality during this, of all days, the day of our- uh. Breakup. Date.” 

Virgil snickered again, leaning backwards and falling against Dee’s shoulder. “We’ll be okay, won’t we? As friends?”

Dee nodded, looking back up at the sky, which was still blocked with tree branches, unfortunately. “We will.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as promised I the beginning notes, here’s that article I read: https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/question/2004/january.htm  
> (Trigger warnings for extreme racism and violence against Black people)


	9. Some Second Best

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I don’t know why I even try to get through to you. I must be out of my mind, or you must be playing coy. For you have taken the light out of my eyes, so help me be through with you baby, stop being so sweet and sever the ties._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added Logan to this chapter for the sole reason that I’ve been rewatching Star Trek but I promised myself I wouldn’t start writing any new Star Trek stuff until this fic was finished. And Logan and Spock are the same fucking character so it’s called Coping.

It isn’t easy to get over someone and Virgil didn’t have any previous experience in that area. He’d never successfully gotten over anyone. Of course, he’d only ever loved Deceit and he wasn’t going to fully get over her after only a few weeks. He was currently enjoying a calming and quiet day, and by calming and quiet, he meant he was on top of the refrigerator eating frosted flakes out of the bag, blaring Motionless In White from his 2007 iPod speakers, and hissing at anyone who approached the kitchen. In all honesty though, he was coping fairly well. He’d only broken down in tears twice. Today. It was fine. He was fine. 

Dee, on the other hand, had ducked out again. Not completely, she was still causing a small amount of subconscious influence from the background, but no one had seen her in person for several weeks. Not since she and Virgil had broken up. She didn’t answer her door, not even when Roman had brought over snacks and materialized flying snakes to comfort her. One of the more concerning things, which Roman noticed during his investigative attempts at tracking her down, was that she wasn’t even going to temple. He’d gone to check on a Saturday morning, and Roman recognized a couple people who’d been talking to her the day Roman had gone to temple with her, and they’d asked Roman where she was. It was worrying him quite a bit. Quite a bit more than he'd like to let on.

Everything Roman knew about relationships (again, from the internet, everything that either Roman or Virgil ever learned was either from their one shared brain cell or WIkihow) told him that after a breakup, it was important to have a support system. And yet Dee adamantly refused this support system. Virgil, after a significant amount of complaining, allowed Roman and the others to check in on him once in a while and watch _Nightmare Before Christmas_ with him, but Dee wouldn’t even yell at them through the door. 

Perhaps if Roman camped outside of her room for several hours, he could eventually coax her out. Or if he stayed for days. Or a week, or longer, until she _had_ to come out for some reason. Or, the worst possible option, he could allow her to take things at her own pace, and if she wanted to go to someone for help, Roman would be there, and if she didn’t, Roman would still be there. A bit farther away. Supporting her from a distance. As a good friend would do. 

And speaking of being a good friend…

“Again?” Logan’s voice was far too judging for Roman’s taste, and he spun around to give him an intimidating death stare. Logan was not intimidated. 

Roman huffed, holding the plate of perfectly rare and well-seasoned steak. “She needs to eat!” He complained, throwing his hands up and nearly causing the steak to fall on the floor.

“On the contrary, she actually needs nothing of the sort.”

That was, unfortunately, true. Roman hated it when Logan was right. Which meant he hated Logan almost all the time.

“Well, then she… she needs emotional support,” Roman said, wanting to cross his arms indignantly. 

Logan adjusted his glasses in that manner that made Roman want to smack him upside the head, but he restrained himself. “Would it not be more logical for Patton to be the one to provide ‘emotional support’, considering he is the emotionally oriented-”

“ _Fuck_ Patton,” Roman interrupted, “all due respect, but _fuck_ Patton.” 

“I don’t see why fucking Patton would solve the situation-”

“Are you gonna let me go visit Dee, or are you gonna trap me here with your stupid logic for the next three hours?”

Logan stood up, setting the book he was reading aside, and holding out his hand. “I’ll take it. She hasn’t responded to you in the past, so why would she now? You should try a new tactic.”

Yet again, Roman was annoyed by the right-ness of Logan’s words, but he begrudgingly handed the plate of steak to him anyway. He cared more about Dee’s happiness than he did about admitting Logan may have a good point about something. 

“You don’t even know where her room is, do you?” 

“I assume down that hall,” Logan said, gesturing to the dark sides’ hall. “Probably fairly close, considering-”

“Okay, okay, shut up, go, jesus.” Roman gestured wildly, trying to get him to shut up as quickly as possible. “I don’t need to hear about your elaborate thought process and how smart you are.”

“Well, there’s no need to be snappy,” Logan muttered as he made his way out, although there wasn’t much emotion in it, so Roman wasn’t sure if it was meant to be sarcastic or not. He glared at Logan as he left anyway.

Logan walked down the hallway and found Deceit’s door easily, it was the most obviously ‘Deceit’ door on this side of the house, he didn’t even feel the need to check the rest of them, so he knocked on it.

“Hello, Deceit. It’s Logan. I come bearing steak.” No answer, so he knocked again and waited a few seconds before setting the plate on the floor. “Roman prepared it for you, he seems very concerned for your wellbeing.” Again, there was silence. He waited a bit longer, counting up to two full minutes in his head before speaking again. 

“I understand that losing a loved one through a breakup can be painful, but it is a proven fact that allowing others to help you through these times provides a much easier way for you to work through your… emotions.” 

The door opened a crack, and a hand stuck out. Logan reached down and picked up the plate again, handing it to the outstretched arm and watching as the door slammed shut again. He wondered if he should leave. He decided to stay, standing awkwardly in front of her door and waiting for exactly eleven minutes and forty-two seconds before the door opened again and the hand stuck out, holding the empty plate. 

“I’m… assuming you enjoyed it?” Logan asked, taking the plate from her. She didn’t answer. “I’ll tell Roman you did, is that all right?” There were no complaints, so he took that as a yes and made to leave, but was stopped as soon as he’d taken half a step by the hand that reached out, grabbing his arm. 

“Is there- is there a reason for this?” Logan asked, turning back around and attempting to pull his hand out of her grasp. Her fingernails dug into his wrist. 

“Deceit? I cannot help you if you refuse to speak.” The grip on his arm loosened, and then went away altogether. 

“Tell him I said thank you,” Deceit said through the door, and her voice was so quiet Logan had to strain to hear it, but before he could respond, the door was slammed shut and he heard the sound of the lock clicking back into place.

“I will.” Logan chose not to be offended at the fact that Deceit had neglected to thank him for bringing her the food in the first place. One step at a time, he supposed. He hadn’t even expected her to talk at all. 

Once back in the living room, Roman immediately made it his mission to bombard him with questions about what had happened. Logan simply handed him the empty plate and went to his room. He didn’t have time to get involved in anyone’s relationship dramatics. 

Roman’s response to that was one most illogical and unwarranted, as he threw the plate in Logan’s general direction as he walked up the stairs. It missed, because Roman was bad at throwing things (not that Logan was any better), and shattered on the ground. 

“She wanted to tell you thank you,” Logan said as he left.

“Asshole,” Roman muttered under his breath as Logan vanished out of sight. What made him so special that Dee talked to him? She didn’t even _know_ him! And Roman was her friend! Not that Roman was jealous, because that would be an extremely petty and stupid thing for him to be jealous about, considering Dee’s circumstances. He drummed his fingers on the wall he was leaning against, staring at the door that led to the hallway to Dee’s room, wondering if he should go see her. She had yet to speak to him, but she’d spoken to Logan. She’d specifically spoken to Logan _about_ him. But she hadn’t spoken to Roman. But she was _thinking_ about him. Because she’d spoken about him. And Roman was overthinking this far too much. But he was so afraid of being overbearing, of being too much, and what if Dee didn’t even like him to begin with? And she only tolerated him because he was _always there_ , always around when she was with Virgil, always meddling, and- oh no. What if she blamed him for her and Virgil’s breakup? It was partially Roman’s fault, even if he’d only ever been trying to help.

Or at least he’d convinced himself he was trying to help. Maybe all of this had been some subconscious effort of causing Dee pain…. and then being able to sweep her up in his arms and be the romantic hero he’d always wanted to be. Oh no. That sounded like something Roman would do. Or did it sound like something someone would accuse Roman of doing? Did it matter? What if he _had_ done all of this for a reason, no matter how subconscious and buried in good intentions, what if he’d done it for the sole purpose of feeding his own ego? Oh, he was a terrible person. He’d really fucked up, hadn’t he? By being so damn narcissistic and thinking the world revolved around him, and-

All of a sudden, Roman was no longer leaning against the wall and tapping his fingers on it. Actually, the wall was now nonexistent. He was, in fact, falling. And then he was on the floor. It felt more like dirt, not floor. Why was he lying on dirt? He blinked, disoriented, trying to figure out what had happened. It was too warm, suddenly, and humid. He sighed, sitting up and rubbing his head. He may have fallen on dirt, but apparently dirt still hurt when you fell on it. Breaking news: it hurts when you fall on things. More at eleven.

“You were giving me a migraine,” a voice above him complained.

He groaned, trying to locate the voice and looking up, up, and… oh. Above him, there was Deceit, lounging in a hammock made entirely of vines. It took Roman a few seconds to realize he was sitting in a jungle of sorts. It wasn’t Deceit’s room, it was full of plants and trees, birds were chirping somewhere, and a warm breeze flowed across Roman’s face. Most importantly, Dee was lounging on a hammock above him, her cape flowing down to almost a height where Roman could touch it if he reached high enough. She was lying back, her arm extended, holding a half-filled wine glass resting on top of her knee, and she was beautiful. Perhaps because Roman hadn’t seen her in several weeks, or perhaps simply because she was, objectively, beautiful. He wasn’t sure, but either way, she was, in fact, beautiful. 

“Dee? Where… where am I? Why am I here?” Roman asked, balancing himself against a tree as he stood up. 

“You were lying to yourself, and it was annoying. So I brought you here,” Dee stated, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. She took a sip from her wine glass before sitting up and leaping off the hammock, landing in front of Roman. 

“But _where_ is here?” 

“My room.”

Roman glanced around, raising an eyebrow. “Dee, I hate to break it to you, but this isn’t your room.”

“Sure it is.” She snapped her fingers, and they were standing in the middle of Deceit’s bedroom, no more birds chirping or warm breezes. She snapped her fingers again and they were back in the jungle. 

“What? How do you do that?” Not that Roman didn’t have an entire world of his own in the Imagination, but still. How had he not known Dee could do this? 

“I guess I’m good at pretending.”

“Well, you are Deceit,” Roman said (very wisely, he is Smart). 

“Thanks for pointing that out.” She threw the wine glass across the jungle (room?) and it shattered against a tree before disappearing into nothing. 

“So, you brought me here on purpose?” Roman asked, trying to get Dee to actually talk to him. Please do not throw any more wine glasses, that is a bit intimidating. 

“Yes. Like I said. You were thinking too loudly. Lying too loudly, I suppose.”

“But I wasn’t…” Roman began, thinking back on what he’d been doing a few minutes ago. Okay, so maybe he had been. He’d been called out by Deceit before for constantly lying to himself. Roman had a bad habit of convincing himself he was a lot worse than he really was, and perhaps it was entirely the crippling anxiety of not being good enough covered up with unbridled narcissism that was doing it, but really, who was to say? 

“Sorry,” he said after a second, “for giving you a migraine. I’ll try and… keep that under control.” He glanced around, wondering how he was supposed to get out if there wasn’t technically a bedroom door. He looked back to Dee, who had apparently gotten another glass of wine while he hadn’t been looking. 

Dee shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s fine. Already had one anyway.” It was then that Roman noticed the bags under her eyes, the way her fingers twitched against the stem of the glass she held, her unbrushed hair, and the wrinkles in her clothes. She clearly wasn’t in a good place, even if Logan had successfully gotten her to eat. Speaking of that, maybe Roman should ask about it, to break this weird tension that had settled between them. 

“So. Did you. Eat the steak Logan brought for you?”

Dee nodded, swirling her wine around and around and around. “He said you made it?”

“Well, I- I made it appear, is all. I didn’t actually cook. Last time I tried to cook, I set the fridge on fire. And yes, I know what you’re thinking, ‘Roman, how did you set the fridge on fire? Why the fridge and not the actual kitchen appliances that deal with fire?’ and boy do I have a story for you-“ Roman stopped talking when Dee reached forward and placed her arm on his. 

“What?” Roman asked, pausing mid-sentence. He was getting to the good part of his story, how rude. 

Dee didn’t answer for a minute, running a hand through her unkempt hair in a valiant but futile attempt to comb it out. She sighed, turning away to examine one of the jungle flowers. “Thank you,” she finally said, her voice quiet.

“For… the food? You already thanked me.”

Dee shook her head, picking a large, bright red flower and holding it out to Roman. “For not giving up on me. You’re a wonderful friend. I haven’t been.”

He blinked at the flower, looking from it to Dee, trying to make sense of her words, mostly focusing on the ‘friend’ aspect of it, that made his heart hurt a little, but that wasn’t the important thing right now. He took the flower, examining it as he tried to figure out what to say. 

“It’s a torch ginger flower,” Dee said, like she was trying to fill the silence. It wasn’t successful, because Roman simply nodded in response. 

“Dee,” He began, placing the flower behind his ear for fashion purposes. “You’re a good friend. It isn’t your fault that… everything sucks right now.” Roman wasn’t usually one to say things like that, but it felt appropriate at this time. Everything did suck. Especially the fact that Dee _kept calling_ Roman her _friend._ That sucked. Yes, Roman was a tad bit selfish, but we been knew. 

“Everything doesn’t suck!” Dee said brightly, and it was quite possibly the fakest tone he’d ever heard her have. Highly disconcerting. “I have wine and a jungle! What more could I possibly want?” 

“A stable relationship with your oldest friend?” Roman offered, and he kind of regretted the words as soon as they came out of his mouth. 

Dee pursed her lips and looked away. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t have an oldest friend.”

“Dee…”

“Roman.” 

“I don’t think keeping things hidden is the best way to cope with what happened,” Roman said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dee said firmly. She waved her hand and her door appeared, standing in the middle of nothing in the jungle. “And if you keep talking about things I don’t know anything about, the door is there, let yourself out.” 

Roman looked at the door, stepping forward and opening it, not all surprised to see the hallway staring back at him, despite the fact that the door was currently leading nowhere. He closed it, looking back at Deceit.

“I’d rather stay,” he said. 

“Are you planning on talking about things I don’t know anything about?” She asked, raising an eyebrow. Maybe this was simply her way of dealing with things. She was Deceit, after all, perhaps denial and pretending was a healthy thing for her to do. Or maybe not. Roman really had no way of knowing, so the best he could do was go along with her and try to help as best as he could.

“No. I won’t,” Roman said. 

“Then I suppose you can stay.” 

Roman smiled. A step in the right direction for Dee. He hoped, at least. Social interaction, even if she was in denial about her feelings, had to be helpful, right? Right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is that roman???? saying a roman sionis in birds of prey quote???? yes yes it is i noticed that too but it was too funny for me not to change once i realized so i left it in. i dont think its even that obvious or easy to spot anyway so


	10. I'll Quit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I’ve done everything but part the seas to try and get you to notice me. I’ve sent up flares, sent smoke signals through the air, but nothing comes except a jetstream which swiftly blows all my best attempts away and thin air’s all I’m left with until the day I die or realize there’s no use in trying anymore._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know those sexc pictures of cute girls doing each other's makeup while one is lying down and the other is on top of her? yeah. yeah.

“Is this what you’ve been doing all this time? Lounging here in your pretend jungle?” Roman asked, trying not to make his tone sound too accusatory. He wasn’t offended by Dee’s actions, or at least, he was trying to convince himself he wasn’t. 

“Something wrong with that?” Dee was back to lounging on her hammock, and Roman was trying to work up the courage to ask if he could sit with her. 

He hesitated. “... No. No, I guess there isn’t.” He sighed, looking up at her, watching her cape blow in the breeze as the hammock swung gently. “But…” He was so tired of being the one to tell everyone that he didn’t think they were happy, but honestly, no one else seemed like they were up to the task of providing emotional help, so Roman was unfortunately the one to do it. 

“Hm?”

“Well, I really can’t help but notice that you, uh, have bags under your eyes. And your hair-”

“What’s wrong with my hair?” Dee self consciously brought her hand up to her hair, trying to comb it out with her fingers.

“Well, it’s- it’s that it’s a bit… um. Tangled. And, I don’t know, you seem a little…” Roman tried very hard to think of a nice way to put what he was thinking. “A little frazzled.” 

“ _Frazzled_?”

“Well, I didn’t want to be mean but…” He examined Dee’s wrinkled clothes and twitchy fingers. “I mean, yes, yes I’d say you look frazzled.”

If Deceit had been in one of her normal moods, Roman felt it was safe to assume she would’ve rolled her eyes. He gestured for her to come back down from her hammock, which she did, begrudgingly, leaping down and taking Roman’s outstretched hand. 

“If I’m so frazzled, why don’t you un-frazzle me?” 

So now the word _frazzle_ was going to make him think of things he shouldn’t think about in regards to a friend. He’d very much like to frazzle Deceit.

Or un-frazzle her.

Well, now Roman himself was frazzled from all this thinking about frazzling. 

“Well, I-” he broke off, swallowing. “You’ll have to- I’ll need a hairbrush, and makeup. Unless. You were joking, and you don’t want me to do any of that. Then we can forget I said anything and go back to not talking.” 

Dee snapped her fingers and they were back in her room. “Well, run along and get what you need, then. I’ll wait here.”

“Wait, so you want me to-”

“I won’t stop you.” 

Roman’s face lit up with excitement, and he was out of the room in a second (temporarily forgetting he could summon things whenever he wanted) and was back with not a makeup bag, but more like a giant makeup tote. So much makeup. More makeup than he needed at any given time in any scenario, but he had to make sure he was prepared! He was not going to let Deceit down by giving her a subpar makeover. He needed to be a good friend. 

“Wow, do I look that bad?” Dee asked, raising an eyebrow at the amount of makeup Roman had brought. 

Oh. Oops. He opened his mouth to defend his decision to bring an amount of makeup so large he could open up his own booth in the mall and bombard people with free samples for weeks, but Dee shook her head, gesturing for him to come back in her room as she sat down on her floor, crossing her legs. 

“First, pick out an outfit for me. I’ve been wearing the same thing for…” she paused, glancing down at her clothes and unsuccessfully smoothing out some wrinkles, “well, it’s been too long.” She waved her hand at her closet, leaning her head back against the side of her bed frame. She looked tired, so tired, and Roman wanted to wrap her up in three hundred blankets and give her a nice warm cup of tea. 

He opened up her closet doors and began looking through her clothes, feeling particularly awkward about it. Most of Deceit’s clothes were over-the-top, extravagant, and generally absolutely gorgeous, so he found it quite hard to pick something. He ended up taking out a yellow vintage-style dress, mostly because it was puffy. It wasn’t Roman’s fault he liked puffy, beautiful dresses, especially ones that were so obviously _Deceit._ He pulled it off of the hanger and held it out hopefully.

“This one?” He asked.

Deceit snapped her fingers and she was wearing it instantly, nodding in approval. “Could you get me a pair of black gloves? And fishnets?” 

Roman paused for a second before nodding, locating the items and handing them over and _oh my, oh no, oh fuck, she’s hot_. He’d already known that, of course, but now it was abundantly clear. It was also abundantly clear that he was staring at her. 

“Well?” Dee asked, clearing her throat and startling Roman out of his daydream. “I thought I was promised a full makeover.” Roman was now vaguely wondering if Deceit was actively trying to cause him a heart attack, because honestly, this was all simply too much and Roman had a very delicate heart, he could only take so much, please be gentle with him. 

“Right, yes, yeah, uh- mhm. Makeover.” He moved to sit next to Dee on the floor, then adjusted their positions so they faced each other. “Let me know if I pull your hair or anything,” he said as he began brushing it, trying not to think about how close they were to each other. 

Dee made a quiet sound of acknowledgement, but didn’t say anything else as Roman continued to brush out the tangles of her hair. He attempted to be very careful, starting at the ends of her hair and working his way up, so as not to make her hair matted at the ends. He was very skilled in the art of hair brushing, and he didn’t get many opportunities to use this skill, but Dee’s hair was long, well past shoulder length, and a golden-yellow color with streaks of green running through it when it hit the light right, much like her scales. 

Roman could brush her hair for hours, to continue to run his fingers through her hair until the end of time. She was so beautiful, and how many times could Roman think that before he finally stopped being in love with her and got over his annoying feelings?

Her hair was excruciatingly tangled, but Roman continued to brush it long after it was smoothed out. Then he moved on to simply running his hands through it, playing with the soft, lightly bouncing curls that sprung up between his fingers. She was so different from the other sides, so fascinating and wonderful. He could spend hours simply staring at her and still find a new thing to be awed by every minute. 

“Well, I guess…” Roman trailed off, getting distracted by Dee’s pretty hair and starting again after a minute, “I guess I can do your makeup now,” he said, finally removing his hand from Deceit. Her eyes were closed and she blinked them open to look at Roman, a small smile forming on her face. 

“If you’re done playing with my hair.” 

He felt his face turn bright red and he turned away, busying himself by pulling over the makeup tote and beginning to take out the things he’d need. “Um, yeah. Sorry.” 

“No apology necessary, Roman.”

When Roman turned back around, holding a few different shades of foundation and concealer, wondering which one would fit Dee’s (extremely pale) skin tone best, she was lying down on the floor, her legs crossed casually. 

“Why-”

“I thought this would be the easiest position for you to be able to see my face,” she said plainly, and in such a matter-of-fact tone that Roman easily believed it, even though he had a sneaking suspicion she was flirting with him again. Not that Deceit flirting with him playfully was a new dynamic, or even unwanted, but after her avoiding him for so long, it felt odd to suddenly have things in their friendship apparently back to normal. 

“Right. Makes sense.” He shuffled over to kneel next to Deceit on her side. She rolled her eyes, pulling him up. 

“No, your highness, over here,” she said as Roman allowed himself to be pulled around, not really sure what was happening. “On top of me, like a man.” The devious smirk on her face was far, far too much for Roman to take as he tried to come up with words to say. But he was now. On top of Deceit, one leg on either side of her at her hips. Staring down at her with his mouth ajar and his eyes wide open in surprise. 

“Um,” he said intelligently, still holding up the makeup brushes in one hand and concealer in the other. Was there a shade past bright red? Because that was the color of Roman’s face at the moment. Magenta, maybe. Possibly maroon. He wasn’t really sure. 

That was hardly the point, as the point was now that he was sitting on top of Deceit, and he was supposed to be doing her makeup, but how was he supposed to concentrate on doing her makeup when? She? When she was? When they were? In this? Position? He would simply have to do his best at focusing. So, with slightly shaking hands, he began to apply concealer to the dark bags under her eyes, carefully brushing it in, and then applying more, because the dark circles were a lot darker than he’d realized, and then even more, until he was finally satisfied. 

Deceit’s eyes were closed, so she couldn’t tell, thankfully, but Roman was _incredibly_ close to her face. He paused for a moment to study her scales, the way the light from her heat lamps above them accentuated their metallic shine, the way her skin gradually transitioned to scales, slightly bumpy probably, like on her fingers and hand, but then smooth and soft. She really was gorgeous. Roman had never known anyone like her, anyone so refreshingly different and yet somehow _the same_ , someone who could understand him and appreciate why he did what he did. Someone who seemed not to notice his love for her (which he really thought he’d made abundantly clear many times, but apparently not), even though she provided him with endless opportunities to make a fool out of himself in front of her by flirting with him.

“Um, Dee?” Roman said, adjusting his position and then remembering he was sitting on top of Deceit and getting immediately flustered again. 

She hummed but kept her eyes closed, seemingly unaware of Roman’s current emotional state (which was; Mortified).

“I was wondering…” He trailed off, he’d been speaking without really thinking too hard about it and he wasn’t sure what he’d been about to say. Maybe ‘do you like me or are you flirting with me to tease me because you’re friends and you would do this to anyone you were friends with, but you don’t have any other friends so I can’t have any point of reference?’ That was probably a good question to ask.

“Yes?” Deceit prompted, and she ended the word on a hiss, whether it was voluntary or not, Roman wasn’t sure, but her tongue stuck out as she hissed, vibrating like a snake’s would, and this caused Roman to forget anything else he’d been thinking about.

“Uh. Never- never mind. I… forgot.” And he honestly had, so Deceit couldn’t call him out for lying. A win for everyone (except Roman, who still very much wanted to know if Dee was actually genuine about flirting with him or not, even if he had temporarily forgotten about that). 

Dee hummed noncommittally, and then she wiggled, like she was trying to get comfortable. Roman, who was still on top of her, was somehow even more Mortified over this, but he made a valiant attempt to ignore his Mortification. He began working on her eye makeup, first a nice dark green shade of eyeshadow, then a winged eyeliner which was far too big and intense for normal everyday makeup, but Roman and Deceit both seemed to live for overly intense, non-everyday makeup they probably should not wear every day but did anyway.

Next, he chose to focus on lipstick. It took him far too long to decide on a color, eventually going with a traditional red; he figured it would go well with the vintage style of the dress he’d picked for her. And he’d never seen her in red lipstick. _And_ holy shit, she looked wonderful in red lipstick. 

“Oh,” he said softly, leaning back to admire his work. It wasn’t really his work, because, as Roman had been thinking for far too long, far too many times in the past hour, Deceit was gorgeous. 

Deceit blinked her eyes open, looking up at him. Her expression was calm, oddly so, like Roman giving her a makeover had actually relaxed her. 

“How do I look?” She asked, and Roman could see the bright white tips of her fangs poking out of her mouth as she spoke. 

“Wonderful,” Roman said breathlessly, shaking his head. Deceit laughed, poking his thigh. 

“Of course you’d say that, you did it.”

“No, no I mean, _you’re_ wonderful. You’re beautiful, even without the eyeshadow and everything. I’ve- well, I’ve thought that for a while, I see you, and-” He broke off, deciding to shut up. He scooted over, about to lift himself off of Deceit so she could sit up, but she grabbed his wrist before he could, pulling him down so close their noses almost touched. 

Then she lifted her head up, propping herself up on her elbow, and kissed him on the cheek. Roman didn’t even bother complaining that she had probably gotten a lipstick smudge on him, because she had kissed his cheek, and while yes, a cheek kiss didn’t _technically_ count as a _kiss_ kiss, and Deceit had kissed him on the cheek before, it still made his heart leap out of his chest and do a little tap dance. 

They stared at each other once Deceit had pulled back, still close to him, close enough for Roman to lean forward one little centimeter and give her a proper kiss. And here he was thinking about kissing Dee for the millionth time, and maybe he should do it already.

So that’s exactly what he did. Actually, it seemed more like it was what they both did at the same time. They had both moved forward like some kind of mysterious magnetic pull had taken over them, and then they were kissing. And it was better than Roman had ever imagined (and yes, he had imagined it, he _was_ the creative trait, after all; he had imagined it quite a bit in his spare time). 

Yet again, he couldn’t be bothered to worry about the lipstick smudges that would appear, because yet again, he was too busy having his _brain explode_ because he was _kissing Deceit._ It only took a few short seconds before he came to his senses, unfortunately, and he was leaping off of Dee like he’d been electrocuted, standing up and backing away, eyes wide with shock. 

Dee sat up, her hand going to her mouth, fingers tracing over her lips before falling back into her lap. Roman watched the puffy skirt of her dress bounce against her hand. He didn’t look her in the eye, instead staring at her hands. 

“I-” He began, but Deceit interrupted him, holding her hand out in the universal ‘shut up’ signal. 

“I’m sorry,” she said as she stood up, brushing out her skirt. “I’m sorry, I don’t- I don’t know what came over me.” She laughed and even Roman in all his obliviousness could tell it was fake. 

“I think I… I’ve been so lonely lately, and you’re so sweet to me, and I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’m sorry,” she repeated, and Roman wanted to shout at her to stop apologizing because they’d _kissed_ and that was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to Roman in his _life_ , but his mouth refused to work in that way. 

“Dee, I-” He began, and then his mouth stopped working again, and it opened and closed like a fish. Fish Roman. He was a fish now. Maybe he could go live in the ocean forever and hide there until one day, he died. 

Dee’s hand was over her mouth, eyes wide with shock or disbelief of what had happened, or both, or something else entirely, Roman wasn’t sure. 

“Roman,” she said finally, as she stepped around him, opening her door. “I don’t mean to sound rude, but would you mind terribly if I asked you to leave?”

There was a long silence, as Roman continued to make fish-like movements, trying to talk words out of his mouth hole. “Dee-”

“Please. Could you please leave? I’m sorry, I need you to leave, Roman,” Dee interrupted, and her hands were shaking again. Roman hadn’t noticed it before, but the shaking had stopped for a while as Roman had been giving her a makeover. 

“I- yeah.” Roman cleared his throat, looking down at the floor as he walked past Deceit and out the doorway. “Can-” He started, turning around and extending his arm, and then the door was slammed shut in his face. Well then. He made a small noise in the back of his throat, like the beginning of a sob that he couldn’t quite get out. He was still rather in shock over the fact that he and Deceit had _kissed_ , and he had yet to focus on what had happened after. 

But he knew better than to stand in front of Deceit’s doorway when she clearly didn’t want him there, so he appeared in his room, trying to discern what he should do. He turned to his vanity, sitting down and staring at himself in the mirror. The lipstick smudge on his cheek was dark and noticeable, but the one he focused on was the smudge across his lips. That provided proof that kissing Deceit had, in fact, not been a fever dream. He continued to stare into the mirror, his reflection staring back at him with the same shell shocked expression Roman wore.

He tapped his fingers against the vanity table, listening to the _click, click_ sound his nails made. Perhaps he shouldn’t have left Deceit’s doorway, he should’ve stayed and insisted they talk about what had happened. Perhaps he shouldn’t have kissed Deceit at all, or she shouldn’t have kissed him, or… whatever it was that had happened. They shouldn’t have kissed each other, he supposed, was the most accurate statement.


	11. Dreams of Romance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You’ve got me feeling a heartache unlike any I’ve had before. I’m lying here on the floor with one eye on the door in case you show. It hurts me to know that I’ll never stand a chance with you. I wish I could believe that my dreams of romance could come true._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im about to blow this whole case wide open for yall. Roman,,,,,,,,, is Not a boy. hes also not a girl. royalty transcends gender. this is entirely not relevant to the chapter its something i think abt bc no matter what pronouns i use for a character ever, unless i explicitly state their gender (like i did with dee saying she’s a trans woman) then its safe to assume theyre some form of nonbinary. this is because projecting onto fictional characters is A Good Time For Me And Everyone Else. anyway continue on.

Deceit was very resolute in her apparent decision to pretend that day with Roman had never happened. She was so resolute in it that it made Roman almost completely forget it _had_ happened. Perhaps he’d imagined it, and it was like all the other times he’d imagined kissing Dee, only somehow this imagined time had ended sadly. This was really the only thing that prevented Roman from truly believing he’d imagined it; he’d never create some sort of elaborate makeover session which ended in a kiss and then being kicked out of Deceit’s room. He’d give himself a happy ending. 

However, Roman had not been given a happy ending, so it had to have been real, which meant that he really had kissed Deceit, and that Deceit was ignoring it and pretending it never happened. 

She invited Roman out on some occasions, taking him to temple on Saturday’s. Even though Roman was resolute in his non-belief of G-d, he thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere and community, it was relaxing and comforting. It almost made him feel like he and Deceit were… together. In a romantic way. 

During one outing, Roman and Deceit were sitting outside a cute cafe, Roman having to pause their conversation every five minutes to pet any dog that happened to walk by, and Deceit watching him and occasionally giving him her infamous knees-weak, stomach-fluttery, smile for apparently no reason at all except to make his knees weak and his stomach fluttery. 

Something Roman had realized during these not-dates with Deceit, was that sometimes silence was good. Usually, Roman couldn’t stand silence; he found it to be one of the most irritating things in the world. But silence with Deceit was comforting, pleasant, and several other nice adjectives that all meant the same thing. Silences with her were filled up with gentle touches of their hands, casual smiles, and so many other things, so many other wonderful things that only made Roman fall in love with her even more than he already had. 

“Dee?” Roman asked, finally breaking that sacred silence.

She hummed, looking up from her teacup. “Yes?” She tilted her head, a smirk on her face as she looked at Roman. “You have cupcake frosting on your face.”

This, of course, made Roman lose all the confidence he’d previously had and he hasted to wipe it off, which only made Dee laugh more, much to his chagrin.

“It’s on the other side,” she said, leaning forward and wiping it off with her finger. “I can’t eat frosting.”

She was holding her finger up to Roman’s mouth, and she _lived_ to torture him, didn’t she? Well, now Roman was in a bit of a pickle. Because he really, really very much wanted to lick the frosting off her finger. At the same time, that would be an obvious signal to Deceit that he was in love with her. On the other hand, Dee was the one who was offering. She was explicitly offering Roman the chance to lick frosting off her finger, and if he refused to, it would likely make things awkward. Almost as awkward as if he actually did it. It was a real conundrum, but he considered his options for all of one second before leaning forward and licking the frosting off of Deceit’s finger, because he is an incredibly impulsive person with negative amounts of self-control. 

For a moment, they looked at each other, Deceit’s hand still extended and Roman’s mouth slightly ajar. And he regretted his decision to lick the frosting off Deceit’s finger for a second because all of a sudden they were staring at each other in a silence that was now, regrettably, awkward. It was over in a second though, and that second was almost too short for Roman to notice the look on Deceit’s face right before she pulled her hand away and smiled at him casually.

Roman swallowed, clearing his throat. “Dee,” he said, playing with the string of his teabag, curling it around and around on his fingers, “I’m about to say something, and I know you’re going to pretend it never happened, and that I don’t know what I’m talking about, and you’ll end up convincing me it didn’t actually happen, but maybe that’s for the better, so we can both move on, but… we kissed, Dee.” 

He looked up at Dee, watching as she leaned back, setting down her teacup. She sighed, a long, drawn-out sigh, closing her eyes for a brief moment before opening them again to respond. 

“Yes. We did.” 

“Dee, if this is somehow your way of using reverse psychology on me, it isn’t work-”

“I’m not doing anything of the sort. We did kiss, and it was… _unbelievably_ stupid of me, and I’d hoped because of the way you didn’t talk about it, we could pretend it never happened and move on, but…”

“Dee, _what?_ What the hell do you mean it was ‘unbelievably stupid’ of you?” Roman asked.

“I mean that I was lonely, and confused, and you’ve been so kind to me, and-” she paused, biting her lip and staring down at her lap. “And…” 

“And?” Roman prompted.

“Well, I suppose…” She played with the edge of her sleeve before looking up at Roman almost sheepishly. “I suppose I was… being a little petty,” she admitted, and Roman raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to elaborate because he wasn’t entirely following this train of logic. 

“I was angrier at Virgil than I was admitting to myself. And I thought that by kissing you, I could feel better about myself and at the same time… get back at him.”

“Get back at…” Oh. Deceit hadn’t kissed Roman because she’d wanted to kiss him specifically, for any reason regarding _him_ , it was simply because she’d been mad at Virgil and needed a way to take it out on something. And Roman had happened to be that _something_. He tried not to feel too hurt by that, but it was hard not to be. 

“I’m sorry, Dee, I- I have to go. I realized, Logan, um, wanted- to talk to me? About- about something, I have to- go.” He stood up, tears forming in his eyes as he glanced around, checking to make sure no one was around to see him, before he vanished out of sight, leaving Deceit alone despite her protests of confusion. 

He popped up in the living room, right next to Logan, ironically, who had been reading some kind of science magazine, and Roman decided the best plan of action was to collapse onto the couch next to Logan and start to cry. Obviously. 

This plan of action seemed to worry Logan, who put down his magazine and awkwardly put a hand on Roman’s shoulder. 

“Um,” he said, and Roman was reminded of the fact that Logan wasn’t great with dealing with emotions. 

“Can I help you?” He offered, his hand still on Roman’s shoulder, patting him awkwardly. 

Roman groaned in response, shaking his head. He didn’t have the energy or mental capacity at the moment to discuss his problems with anyone, much less Logan. 

“I see. Perhaps you should talk to Deceit about this.”

He sat up, giving Logan a confused look. “I didn’t say anything.” 

“You left the house with Deceit less than an hour ago and came back alone, so the only logical conclusion is that Deceit is causing you some amount of stress or sadness, perhaps even frustration and anger.” 

“I dislike you. Intensely,” Roman said tiredly. 

“Why don’t you tell me what’s happened? I cannot be much help emotionally, but perhaps it would help for you to simply tell me what’s happened to get it out of the way?”

He didn’t answer, shaking his head. “No, no, I’d rather not.”

“Then I’ll tell you, Logan,” a voice behind them said, and Logan turned to see Deceit leaning against the doorway, playing with a pocket watch that seemed to have materialized for convenient aesthetic purposes, as Deceit had never once in her life used a pocket watch before. 

“Yes, Deceit, please, sit down. Have a conversation with Roman. I’ll mediate.” 

Deceit made a face, dropping the watch into the depths of her pocket. “I’d rather stay here. Roman’s mad at me because I kissed him.” 

“That’s not-” Roman began, but was immediately interrupted by Logan.

“You kissed him? Why is that?”

Roman groaned, leaning back against the couch too quickly and smacking his head into the wall behind him. “Fuck,” he muttered.

“None of your business,” Deceit said, crossing her arms as Logan stood up, walking over to her. 

He glanced back at Roman, who was rubbing the back of his head with a sour look on his face. 

“Well, I don’t find it all that shocking. Deceit has a habit of that sort of thing, really quite unusual behavior.” 

“I don’t think kissing two people is anything groundbreaking,” Roman said, still feeling very bitter about this whole thing.

“Two people?” Logan asked, raising an eyebrow.

Deceit clicked her tongue, looking away. “Patton can’t keep a secret, can he?” 

“ _Patton?”_ Roman asked, wrinkling his nose. “I indirectly kissed _Patton?”_

“I was _drunk_ ,” Deceit hissed, snapping her head to look at Roman, her fangs poking out of her mouth as she glared at him. “He isn’t any good, anyway.” 

Roman very pointedly covered his ears. “No, no, _no, no, no,_ too much information, I do _not_ want to know-”

“As I was saying,” Logan interrupted, “it seems Deceit has a peculiar habit of jumping into relationships and, on occasion, what I believe are referred to as ‘one-night stands’. I’m surprised you hadn’t noticed, although I suppose it’s because you never talk to Patto-”

“For the love of all that’s holy, _shut up_ ,” Deceit said, rolling her eyes.

“Of course. That is your private business, but as I said, when it comes time for the next Haven’t Kissed Deceit Club meeting, it’ll be me and the archbishop.”

Deceit pursed her lips, leaning forward off the doorway and stepping forward. “I’ll save you the club dues,” she said, pulling him in by his elbow and kissing him before walking out of the room, giving them a little backward wave as she left. 

Logan watched her leave, wiping off his mouth with a pocket square he had seemingly pulled out of nowhere, then glanced over at Roman, whose sour and bitter expression seemed to have only gotten more sour and bitter.

“Fascinating,” he said, shaking his head as he sat back down on the couch and picked up his science magazine again. 

“What’s so fascinating about that? Apparently Dee kissing me isn’t a great big deal since everyone’s done it.” Roman crossed his arms, sulking. 

“Did you know that hypersexuality and difficulty comprehending emotions regarding romantic and platonic love is often a result of childhood trauma?” Logan asked, flipping his magazine page casually.

“Is that… relevant?”

Logan shrugged nonchalantly, as if he weren’t discussing something earth-shatteringly important. “It could be.”

“Are you implying Deceit… that something… something happened to her?”

“I’m implying nothing. Merely stating a fact that may or may not be topical to the current moment in time.” 

It would explain Deceit’s behavior, her need for attention, to be noticed, the way she seemed to crave physical closeness but always pulled away when Roman asked too many questions. It explained why Roman felt he could understand her in a way he could never quite consciously explain, it always seemed to elude him. Probably because it was something Roman had always tried to deny in himself, something he’d rather push to the side and forget about. 

Roman had gotten into his fair share of problems when he was younger, as a child and a teenager, going in the Imagination and overestimating his skills, getting hurt and sometimes even killed (though he was promptly resurrected in his room afterward). He’d always done this mainly because no one else would ever give him attention, he was always on his own, thinking up things to do, getting too carried away in his daydreams, and getting hurt. He was still that way, but that was beside the point.

The point was that he had no idea about Deceit’s life before they’d become friends; she’d lived on the dark side of the house and based off of the little Virgil spoke of it, it was dangerous there. And that was pretty much all Roman needed and wanted to know about it, he didn’t want to even briefly think about anything Deceit could’ve gone through in her life. All he needed to know was that perhaps he should’ve been more understanding, more sensitive. He’d rushed Virgil and Dee into a relationship (unintentionally, but still), he’d gotten them to break up less than three months later, he’d pushed too hard trying to make her get over Virgil after their breakup, and then he’d kissed her, and this was all because he was selfish. He was still craving that endless need for attention. 

_“Tell me… make me believe that I’m good. That I’m capable. And tell me that… that you love me.”_

_“Roman I can’t tell you that, I can’t lie to you and convince you of that because it wouldn’t be a lie, it’s the truth.”_

_“No, please Dee… it isn’t true, it’s not.”_

_“I can only tell you the truth. You’re a wonderful person, Roman. You trusted me enough to let me in, and enough to let me be your friend, and you’ve only ever been kind to me.”_

Maybe she really had meant it, really had believed it, when she’d said all that to Roman. Maybe she had. How would he know? How would Roman ever know what was real and what was a lie with Deceit? He wouldn’t. He’d never _really_ know, but that was the whole point. To give her trust, to tell her the truth, and hope beyond anything else she returned the favor, returned the trust. 

Roman hadn’t done that. He’d never been honest with her. Every day, every minute, he had spent with Deceit since the first day they’d spent time together, Roman had been lying to himself, lying to her, he’d never really allowed himself to trust her fully. 

That had to be fixed. Lying was no way to have a real relationship, friendship or otherwise. 

“Logan,” he whined, knocking the magazine out of his hand and flopping his head down onto his lap. 

“Yes?” He asked, rather awkwardly, looking down at Roman, his glasses slipping down the edge of his nose

“What would you do if you needed to tell the truth to someone you were friends with because not telling the truth in the past has ruined and/or halted any developments in said friendship with said person?”

Logan blinked. “I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.”

“What is there not to understand?” Roman asked, throwing his hands in the air dramatically. It seemed like a simple enough question to him, how did Logan not have some sort of trick or other non-apology way to resolve a relationship problem like this one? He _always_ had some sort of trick way to solve problems. Just Roman's luck that this was the one time he was being obtuse about it. 

“Well, it seems to me that the answer is obvious. You tell the truth. Is this some form of trick question?” Logan asked, raising an eyebrow as Roman sat up again. 

“It’s not- it isn’t a trick question, it’s-” He groaned, punching the back of the couch cushion. “You’re infuriating. Absolutely infuriating.” 

“Perhaps you should have been more clear in your question and I could give you a better answer.” 

Talking to Logan would be pointless, Roman would simply go around and around again in circles until Roman punched him in the face (speaking from experience, and while punching Logan in the face was satisfying, it wouldn’t help his problem regarding Deceit) and accomplished nothing. 

“Whatever. I’m… I’m going to find Deceit,” Roman finally said, resigned as he left the room, wondering where Deceit had gone. She’d headed towards the kitchen and not through the door to the dark sides’ part of the house. 

Logan muttered a goodbye as he located his magazine which Roman had knocked to the floor, which Roman didn’t bother responding to as he stepped into the kitchen, glancing around the room and finding only Virgil, sitting on top of the fridge, eating cereal out of the bag.

“Have you been there this whole time?” 

Virgil nodded wordlessly, and Roman couldn’t discern the expression on his face, and he wasn’t in the mood for a conversation with Virgil about how he’d kissed Deceit. 

“Did you see Dee?” 

He nodded again, pointing ominously to the back door like a prophet in ancient mythology leading some doomed hero to their untimely demise.


	12. The Hundredth Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I don’t know why I even came here, oh won’t someone tell me please? I long to have your arms around me but I know I’m crazy to even try. Oh, I’m leaning on the lamppost outside the party and I’m crying my eyes out for the hundredth time._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, snakes.  
> Hi snakes.  
> High snakes.

“Hey,” Roman said, nudging Deceit’s shoulder as he sat down next to her. 

“Hello.”

He swung his legs off the edge of the porch, looking up at the sky. The sun was slowly setting, and the lighting was accentuating Deceit’s scales and the multi-colored highlights in her hair. 

“Nice day,” Roman offered, and then cringed, because not one hour ago he and Deceit had been sitting outside a cafe and complaining that it was too cold. 

“A little cold,” Deceit muttered, and Roman noticed as she shivered, wrapping her cape around herself. 

“You could go in.” 

“I’d prefer not to.”

“Oh.” Roman continued to stare up at the sky, counting the seconds in his head, tapping his fingers against his knees as he continued to swing his legs. “Then I’ll stay, too,” he finally said. 

Deceit didn’t answer, bringing Roman back to his finger tapping and staring up at the sky. He opened his mouth a couple times to talk, but ultimately decided against it. 

“Is there a reason you’re still here?” 

The question was asked in a much more accusatory manner than Roman would like, and he pursed his lips, staring up at the moon, watching as it slowly seemed to get brighter and brighter as the sky darkened. An airplane passed by, flying low enough for the engines to be heard over the sound of his own heartbeat. Or maybe it was Deceit’s. He couldn’t tell anymore, really, where his presence ended and Deceit’s began. Somehow, it felt as though they’d had an entire conversation without saying a word to each other. 

“Keeping you company,” Roman shrugged. 

“And what makes you think I want company?”

They both knew she did, there wasn’t any point in Roman answering that question, so he didn’t. 

“You really don’t know anything about love, do you?” Deceit asked, and the question sunk into Roman’s mind and stuck there like a pebble thrown to the bottom of a muddy pond. 

“And you do?”

Deceit shook her head, smiling. “I didn’t say that.”

“Does Virgil?” 

Again, Deceit shook her head, leaning back on her elbows. “Virgil doesn’t know what he wants. He never has. He and I are fundamentally incompatible.”

“How so?” 

“He finds something wrong with every situation, locates a problem, and fixates on it, and fixates on it, and fixates on it, until it drives him insane and he finally does something about it. And then that solution has another problem within it, and so the cycle continues. It’s who he is.”

Roman frowned, glancing over at her before looking away again. “Don’t you always say we’re more than what our jobs are?” 

“Yes, and Virgil _is_ , he is more than the personification of anxiety, he’s so much more, but it’s so rare to see him be anything more. The epitome of anxiety has too much anxiety to let the anxiety go. It’s a catch-22. And I can’t- I don’t _want_ to…” She trailed off and Roman watched her, waiting for her to continue.

“I don’t want to keep being his everything. I can’t keep being the person he goes to because it’s the last resort, because I’m comfortable, familiar, because he’s too afraid to go to the people he _abandoned_ me for. He could either learn that I’ve moved on without him and I don’t have that special place for him saved in my mind anymore, waiting for him to run back, or we could pretend it was still there. And sometimes I’m tired of pretending.” 

“I don’t blame you.”

“And I wasn’t asking for your approval,” Deceit retorted, and then seemed to second guess her words, sighing. “Sorry.”

“Speaking of apologies,” Roman began, and before he could say anything, Deceit interrupted him.

“Are you finally planning on apologizing for calling me shallow?”

Roman scowled, although he wasn’t sincerely annoyed by the question. “You’re still hung up on that?”

“You technically never apologized,” she pointed out, shrugging. 

“Whatever. That’s not what I was going to say.”

“Oh. Were you going to apologize for-”

“ _No!_ Will you let me finish, please?” Roman asked, and now he was sincerely annoyed.

Deceit held up her hands placatingly as she sat up straight again, crossing her legs. “Fine, fine. Continue your spiel.”

“ _Thank_ you. Now, as I was saying, speaking of apologies, you apologized for, um, for kissing me. Afterwards.” Roman stared resolutely up at the sky and the slowly brightening moon as he spoke, refusing to look at Deceit so he could make this a little easier at least.

“Yes. I did. What’s your point?” 

“I should be the one apologizing.”

“Yes, as I said, for calling me shallow, we’ve been over this.”

Roman rolled his eyes, letting out a small laugh despite himself. “No, I- I should apologize because I haven’t been truthful to you. Not since the first day we spent together, you know, that day I allegedly called you shallow--although, if you read through the court records, you’ll find that I actually never used those exact words, I simply said you were ‘actually deeper than I thought, but that’s neither here nor there.” 

“Get to the point already, Roman.”

“Right, yes, so the point. The point is that I’m, well that, I think I’m in love with you.”

There was a silence. A rather long silence, which Roman spent twisting the edge of his shirt sleeve into a little ball. 

“You think?” Deceit finally asked,

Roman paused, considering. “Reasonably certain. Almost positive. I’d say I am. Yes, I think I can say, without hesitation, that I’m in love with you.” 

Again, Deceit took far too long to answer. “Could you say that again? I’m mildly certain I completely blacked out,” she said, and when Roman glanced over, he had to admit she was looking a bit pale. 

“Uh- I’m in love with you?” He ended with a questioning tone, tilting his head as he watched her. 

Before any more of a conversation could be had, a voice from the kitchen interrupted them. 

“Maybe learn to shut the fucking door instead of leaving the screen door open before you start confessing your undying love to each other.” And then said door proceeded to slam shut, making them both flinch. Well, so much for having a heart-to-heart with Virgil about all of these shenanigans. 

“Was he there the whole time?” Deceit asked, and Roman nodded. 

“He was on the fridge eating fruit loops, I didn’t think he’d be _listening_ to us,” he defended himself. 

Deceit rolled her eyes. “You’re an idiot.” 

“Yeah, you’ve mentioned that.” Roman continued in his preoccupation of rolling the edge of his sleeves into little balls, trying to remember what exactly he’d been saying before being so rudely interrupted by Virgil’s angst, but Deceit beat him to it.

“So. You’re in love with me. And you think that _you’re_ the one who should apologize for us kissing because of that?”

Right. That’s what they’d been talking about. Roman nodded silently.

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe we kissed each other? And it was a mutually consensual, if not instinctual and poorly thought out, reaction to our situation at that time?”

“You sound like Logan,” Roman said, which was not an answer to Deceit’s question.

“So I sound right?’

“Maybe you are. But either way, I shouldn’t have-I feel like I took advantage of you. You were- you _have_ been- through a lot, recently, and I don’t know, it doesn’t feel right that I kissed you while you were so vulnerable.” 

Deceit nudged him. “I’m a big girl, I can handle myself. Besides, as Logan made it his business to tell you, I have a habit of doing things like that when I’m lonely. I usually try to go out with strangers, no one in the house, so I don’t have to worry about awkward encounters,” she said, and this was the most open and honest conversation Roman had ever been able to have with her. He felt like one wrong move would ruin this entire conversation, he was holding a bomb about to go off in his hands. 

“But I happened to be there.” 

“It isn’t just that,” Deceit countered, shaking her head. “You’re the first person who’s bothered to _know_ me since Virgil. And Virgil only bothered because he knew I was the only one he was safe with, it wasn’t like he had many options. But you actually worked to know me, you spent time finding me, getting to know me, and I’m so, so grateful for that, in ways I don’t know how to express.”

There was a _but_ coming, Roman could feel it on its way.

“But…”

There it was. He braced himself.

“Because of that, because I genuinely _do_ care about you, I can’t jump into anything with you, I can’t force myself to start another race when I’m not even over all the hurdles from the last one.”

That wasn’t quite what Roman had expected to hear, and he ran the words through several more times in his mind before clarifying their meaning. 

“So what you’re saying is, you could see yourself, in the future, perhaps, you might want to, or rather, you’d be willing to, to try-”

“Yes,” Deceit said, interrupting Roman’s rambling, which he was very thankful for, although that _yes_ didn’t exactly clear everything up for him.

“And how long- how long do you think it’ll be until you’ll feel comfortable with-”

“I don’t know, Roman. I don’t know if or when I’ll ever want to pursue anything with you. Or anyone. Ever again. Perhaps I’m done with all of that. Forever. And my snakes and I will live in solitude until our sorry lives come to our inevitable and highly welcome ends,” Dee said, and the tone reminded Roman a little too much of himself again. He frowned, wondering what he could possibly say in response to that. 

“You won’t live in solitude, I’ll always be here,” he offered after a moment of quiet.

“Roman, I told you-”

“I mean as a friend. I care about you, Dee. More than in a romantic way, I- I love you in every way that could possibly be conceived of, and I want you to know that. I’ve spent this long being your friend without acting on any other feelings, I think I’ll be able to last a little bit longer, and even forever, if it means we can be friends.”

Deceit gave him a smile, and despite its sincerity, there was a huge amount of hesitance in her eyes. “I know. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.” 

“What? What do you mean?” 

“I mean,” Deceit gestured vaguely, as if she was trying to accentuate her point without saying anything verbally. When that failed and Roman continued to look at her in confusion, she dropped her arms in resignation. “I didn’t do anything to deserve this, to deserve _you_ , and I’m waiting for you to realize that, for _someone_ to realize that, and take it, take you, away from me.”

“The thing about deserving things, Dee,” Roman said, lying back on the porch, cringing as his head hit the wood but not bothering to adjust his position, “is that no one really deserves anything. And at the same time everyone deserves everything. It isn’t about the treatment you think you should get, it’s about the treatment you can accept.”

“Roman, as much as I appreciate this philosophy lesson-”

“Let me finish,” Roman said, and Dee shut up, biting her lip. 

“I won’t pretend like I know everything about you, everything that’s happened to you in your life, but I know that you haven’t had a lot of people in your life. And the people you have had, they’ve all let you down in some way, no one’s ever been there for you when you really needed it. So it makes sense you’ve established this ‘I’ll do it myself for myself because no one else will do it for me’ mantra, only then you get stuck in this cycle of hating yourself because what did you do that for? You don’t deserve that, at least, not according to your brain. Your mind tells you to do things for yourself, to be selfish because no one else will care for you, and then your mind punishes you for being selfish because you think you don’t _deserve_ it.” 

“That’s-” Deceit looked like she was about to say something absolutely ludicrous like ‘that’s ridiculous’ before she seemed to think better of it. “Then I suppose I need time to learn how to accept ‘better treatment’,” she said, using air quotes to further demonstrate the fact that she was not taking this seriously, except, of course, she was definitely taking it seriously and simply refusing to acknowledge that fact and let Roman become aware that she was feeling emotional.

“Yes, you will, and I, for one, am entirely willing to assist you in that venture by providing you with the best possible treatment a best friend could provide.”

Dee shook her head, nudging his arm before lying down on her side, next to Roman on the porch. She stared at him, or at least she seemed to be staring at him, perhaps she was lost in thought and the fact that she was looking right at him was a mere coincidence. But either way, Roman was choosing to ignore it in favor of watching the sky. It was dark out, and that seemed to have happened fairly quickly, but then again, Roman had never been very good at keeping track of time, especially not when he was preoccupied with thoughts of and conversations with Deceit (who was still allegedly staring at him, by the way). 

“Do you ever wonder what it’d be like to live in the stars?” Roman asked, and it was the most random question he could’ve possibly come up with, but it had popped into his head and he hadn’t given it a second thought before it spouted from his mouth.

“Probably lonely,” Deceit responded, finally turning onto her back and looking up at the sky with him.

“That’s not technically what I asked. But I’m going to take that as a no, you haven’t wondered what it’d be like to live in the stars.” 

A sudden smell hit Roman’s nose, a cloud of smoke coming with it, and he waved it away, sitting up and coughing as he looked down at Deceit. “Is that-” he began, pointing at the thing that was most certainly not a joint because Deceit would never suddenly materialize a joint out of thin air and proceed to smoke it for no apparent reason. 

“And what if it is?” Deceit interrupted, holding it between her fingers in a way Roman really thought shouldn’t be allowed because smoking weed wasn’t supposed to be sexy. Except that, apparently, it was.

“Where did you even _get_ that?” He asked.

“Oh, don’t get your panties in a twist, it doesn’t _really_ exist.” 

“I don’t know how much that helps,” Roman responded, crossing his arms. Deceit proceeded to blow more smoke in his face at that, which Roman really didn’t appreciate.

“Would it help if I let you share?” Dee held it out to him, a mischievous smile on her face. 

Roman blinked, staring at it, and it occurred to him that he had never smoked anything in his entire life and he would very easily make a fool out of himself and spend the next ten minutes hacking up a lung and regretting his decision to ever fall in love with such an insufferable snake, but instead he found himself accepting it, shrugging nonchalantly. “It wouldn’t _hurt_ ,” he said, even though he knew full well it probably would.

And it did, because not only did he cough profusely for at least a full minute, there was also an extremely unpleasant soreness in his throat now, and Deceit was laughing at him. 

“I hate you,” Roman stated hoarsely, once he’d finally managed to figure out how his throat worked again (perhaps he was mildly exaggerating, but whatever, he didn’t appreciate being laughed at). “How do you even _do_ that? And enjoy it?” Dee’s grin didn’t fade as she answered, taking the joint back from Roman before he made the ill-conceived plan to try that failed endeavor again.

“You get used to it. Besides, some of the best things come with a bit of a sore throat afterward, don’t they?” 

Roman opened his mouth to question the number of times Deceit made innuendos directed at Roman specifically regarding blowjobs, but instead he decided to shut his mouth (for once). That really wasn’t what he needed to be thinking about at the moment, even if it was Dee who had put the thought in his head. 

“Does that even have any effect on you?” He asked instead.

“What, because it isn’t real or because I’m a snake?” 

“Either. Both.”

“Well, first of all, snakes can get high,” Deceit started, “it’s a bit hard to explain the first part. I _can_ be affected by it, if I choose to be. I can set exactly how I want it to make me feel, and then I trap that illusion, so it won’t increase my high no matter how much I have, and it won’t go down until I want it to. I can achieve that without even manifesting a nonexistent joint, but there’s no fun in that.”

“Handy.” Roman wasn’t quite sure if that was something that fell into the category of ‘handy’, but that was the word he chose anyway. “I can’t say I see the appeal. Especially if you can just snap your fingers and have exactly what you want, or at least, the illusion of it.” 

“That’s like asking what the point of _drama_ is, Roman, like asking why you should dress up to go out instead of wearing a potato sack, it’s for the _performance_ , the _artistry,_ the _vibe_ , if you will.”

Now, that Roman could understand. If there was one thing Roman had experience with, it was doing things solely for the vibe and for no other reason whatsoever. “And what’s the vibe you’re hoping to achieve with this?”

“Whatever vibe it is, it seems to be working.”

“Meaning?” Roman raised an eyebrow as Deceit stood up, brushing off her clothes and turning away with a flourish.

“Every time I’ve taken a drag, your face has turned redder. I’d say I set out what I hoped to accomplish. Have a good night, darling.”

Roman was, for the millionth time, now feeling like a fish as he opened and closed his mouth silently, watching Deceit leave, sliding the door shut behind her after winking at him, and then vanishing from his sight in the house. Even while sorting out her complex and deep emotions regarding love and trust, she could still find time and energy to tease the living hell out of Roman, and, now that she knew how Roman felt about her, he could only expect that her ridiculous teasing would get worse and worse.

She really was _absolutely_ infuriating, and Roman hated the fact that he adored her for it.


	13. The Marquee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Here I wait, at the gate of the marquee, which brightly reads, “From Here To Eternity”, which is about how long I've been waiting.Tell me, baby, why’d you go and let me down again? Swept under the rug, acting as if nothing has happened. And just because my heart can take it, does not mean you should go out of your way to break it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> deceit voice when i die i want virgil to lower my casket into the ground so he can let me down one last time

Pocket watches were immeasurably helpful when it came to being able to pull one out of thin air, flip it open, and click your tongue in dismay upon the realization that the person you were waiting for was late; but only if said person you were waiting for was in the vicinity and could see your passive aggressive pocket watch uses. Otherwise there was simply no point in having a pocket watch to begin with. 

Deceit had a pocket watch, which she did materialize out of nowhere before realizing how utterly useless it was because Virgil wasn’t there to see it. And she was, as all indications would suggest, alone. Virgil had been avoiding her for some time now and on one hand, she couldn’t blame him for that, they had ended their last ‘conversation’, if one could even call it that, with Virgil finding out that one of his friends was in love with her. On the other hand, it wasn’t Deceit’s decision to have broken up with him. Or to have gotten back together before that. Or for Virgil to have left her in the first place. So it was none of his business what--or who--Deceit did in her spare time. 

Not that she and Roman were dating. They weren’t. Deceit wasn’t sure they were, even after it had been weeks since he’d finally admitted his feelings. 

Being alone wasn’t one of Deceit's greatest strengths. Without at least one person around to say something nice about her, she tended to fall apart in two seconds flat. Which was why she was becoming increasingly more annoyed with Virgil’s tardiness. Perhaps he was doing this to spite her, one last attempt to cause her pain before they hashed out their relationship once and for all. Or maybe he wasn’t planning on showing up at all, so he wouldn’t have to work out their feelings for each other in regards to love, trust, friendships, and so on and so forth. 

Virgil wouldn’t be purposefully malicious, not to Deceit. She knew that much, but it was still annoying her to no end. She proceeded to hurl the pocket watch across the street. Instead of satisfyingly cracking when it landed on the asphalt and subsequently being run over and flattened by a passing car, it sank into the ground like it had never really existed, which it hadn’t. 

“This is bullshit,” she muttered aloud, causing a middle-aged couple who’d been entering the restaurant whose wall Deceit was currently leaning against to give her looks as they walked inside. She responded by flipping them off, she wasn’t actively trying to be an insufferable person, but she’d been sufficiently annoyed by Virgil’s near-hour-long tardiness, and she wasn’t planning on staying around and wasting her time any longer. She pushed herself off the wall, hoping down from the ledge she’d been standing on, and, with one final glance down both sides of the street to make sure Virgil had no intentions of sneaking up on her and suddenly arriving so as to not let her down once again, she hopped on her motorcycle and took off. 

She had no intentions of going home, not when there were Roman’s who would be curious about what had happened at her not-date lunch date with Virgil, and Virgil’s who would make excuses like, ‘I forgot that was today’, ‘I was sleeping’, or some other form of half-baked attempt at a non-apology. 

There weren’t many other places she could go, of course. She did have an annual pass to the science museum and botanical gardens nearby (courtesy of a rich, charming young man who had spent most of his time in the orchid room and had been nearly as skilled with his tongue as Deceit was, who shall remain nameless so as to protect his personal privacy), and she’d always found something relaxing in gardens. Tropical gardens, of course, greenhouses with refreshing humidity and the slow drip of water from the large, emerald green leaves of an alocasia plant. But there were plenty of others; rose gardens best appreciated on cool, sunny afternoons and surrounded by soft grass, butterfly gardens which were the epitome of summer, sweet smelling and surrounded by the sound of bees and hummingbirds, even unruly, unkempt, and overgrown gardens full of weeds and wildflowers. Deceit could spend an eternity in them all. 

She’d never shared those thoughts with anyone before, not even Virgil. Her visits to the botanical garden had begun after he’d left, the closest she’d ever come to sharing this was probably with that cute orchid boy who was still remaining nameless. Perhaps at some point she’d have someone of importance to share her secret interests with. At the moment though, she was alone. Quite alone. Actually there was almost no one present, neither in the science museum nor its accompanying botanical gardens. Unfortunate, as Deceit had been hoping for a chance encounter with the aforementioned orchid boy. 

But perhaps it was for the better. Deceit should be alone for now, she supposed. That was what Logan would tell her, and he was the most skilled in psychiatry of all the sides and the only one who ever offered logical advice. But perhaps she didn’t need _logical_ advice anyway. 

********

The orchids were dying. It wasn’t something visible when Deceit walked into the greenhouse, but it was a certain _feeling_ that was indescribable. Almost like they were giving up. She extended her hand to one, holding the delicate flower, running her fingertips over it, an empty smile on her face. 

“You feel it too?” She asked, and if she’d been thinking properly about this, she might’ve thought it was odd that she was talking to a flower.

Leaning against the display table, she looked out at all of the plants, the plants that seemed to be feelings the same way she was. 

“I’m starting to think I’m going insane. I don’t have anyone to talk to, or at least, not anyone I want to talk to.” She ran a hand through her hair, taking a deep breath.

“I thought I didn’t need anyone, you know? That I was independent, and all that. But I really _do_ need someone. That’s my problem. I spend so much time distancing myself, that I forget. I forget that I need someone else, or rather that I _want_ someone else.” 

She took another deep breath, counting the seconds in her head. “No one else seems to want me.”

She lifted herself onto the table, picking up the potted orchid and staring at it.

“I don’t want to give up though. But I suppose I have, haven’t I? I came here. To talk to plants, apparently.” The orchid (thankfully) did not respond. At least Deceit knew she wasn’t going completely insane. 

“What do you think I should do? Should I go back and yell at Virgil? Or should I go back and get yelled at by Roman? Or I suppose I could tell Roman what Virgil did and then Roman could yell at Virgil _for_ me.”

The flowers were not impressed by this at all. 

“Yeah, I know, I’m not too happy with myself either,” Deceit said, feeling like she could sense judgement radiating from the flowers. She should probably leave, before someone entered the greenhouse and asked why she was talking to plants alone. However, she did not. Instead of leaving, she slid down onto the floor and stared up at the glass ceiling, watching the foggy shadow of a flock of birds flying above her. 

She stayed that way for a long time, probably at least an hour, staring blankly at the sky and silently wondering if maybe she could sink into the tile floor and not have to deal with anything but dirty shoe soles for the rest of time. She was shaken out of her stupor by her phone ringing, and she pointedly ignored it, but it kept ringing, like whoever it was knew that she was purposefully ignoring it and would continue to call her over and over again until she picked up. Only one person she knew was insufferable enough to do something like that. 

“Hello, Roman,” she said, answering the phone without even checking to make sure it _was_ Roman. 

_“Hey, Dee. You okay?”_

He sounded genuinely concerned, and Dee at least had the decency to feel a little bad about vanishing for several hours with no warning. 

“I’m fine. Didn’t want to come back to the house just yet, but I’m fine.”

_“Lunch with Virgil that bad, huh?”_

Dee grimaced, sitting up on her elbow. “He didn’t show up, so I wouldn’t know.” 

_“He didn’t show up? Oh, I am so killing him,”_ Roman said, and Dee could hear him moving around on the other end of the phone. She rolled her eyes, smiling to herself. 

“Don’t you dare, I’d prefer to have that honor for myself,” she said. “Besides, I’d prefer to let it go.” 

_“Dee, you know me. I don’t let things go.”_

“If he doesn’t want to talk to me, that’s his business. I have no plans to force him.”

_“Yeah, but it’s the principle of the matter, he shouldn’t have said he’d meet with you if he had no plans on actually meeting with you.”_

There was no denying Roman was right about that, but perhaps it had all worked out anyway, it seemed Dee had needed a bit of time to herself to make her realize exactly how much she needed someone there to help her through… all of this. 

“Well. He did,” Dee finally said, in a tone that she hoped conveyed how much she wanted to change the subject. Apparently it worked, because Roman responded by asking her how long it would be until she was coming back. “Missing me already?” She asked teasingly, and Roman sputtered on the other end of the line, and Dee could perfectly see his reddened face and awkward glances away that were so customary of him. 

Upon Roman’s apparent inability to respond coherently, Dee shook her head, answering his previous question. “I’ll be back, maybe in an hour, maybe two. It won’t be long.”

_“Fine. But if you aren’t back in two hours, I’m sending out the search party.”_

Dee shook her head, smiling to herself. “Goodbye, Roman.”

_“Whatever.”_

She hung up, not bothering to put her phone away, and instead continued to stare at the ceiling, trying very hard to think about nothing. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see Roman, it wasn’t that she didn’t consider him a friend, it was the fact that she _did_. Dee spent more time than she’d like to admit thinking about him. The better part of most of her days were spent thinking about him. That was the problem.

It was all too real. And Deceit didn’t deal in reality very well. It was all in good fun until the daydreams Deceit would never admit she’d been having for years were suddenly possible, suddenly realistic, suddenly _wanted._ The entire reason for her existence was ‘ _fake it until you make it’_ , but of course, that begs the rather serious question brought about by such a fun saying--what the hell are you supposed to do once you’ve ‘made it’?

********

“See? I’m back, and look, it’s been… two and a half hours. No rescue mission needed,” Deceit said, smiling half-heartedly at Roman as she entered his room, shutting the door softly behind her. 

Roman looked up from whatever it was he’d been doing, probably writing down his (not very) brilliant video ideas or perhaps a new Dungeons and Dragons-like campaign for himself in the Imagination. “Are we gonna talk about Virgil, or are we pretending he doesn’t exist for the time being?”

Deceit opened her mouth to respond and then closed it again, shaking her head. “It’s complicated, Roman. I know that, and he knows it too. If our problems couldn’t be solved after years of knowing each other, they weren’t going to be solved after one lunch at a mediocre deli.”

“Then what will solve your problems?” 

Almost involuntarily, certainly not thinking about what she was doing, Deceit stepped closer to Roman, until she was standing right in front of him, right in front of the chair he was sitting at, and he looked up at her.

“Time. Moving on, I hope.” She brought a hand up to his shoulder, trailing her index finger across his shirt until it reached the edge of his collar. 

What _do_ you do once you’ve succeeded in the so-called ‘faking it until you’ve made it’? 

Well, you find something else to fake, until that becomes real too.

Her finger traced the edge of his collarbone. His skin was warm, pleasantly so, it felt comforting against her cool skin. She stopped when she reached the middle, and Roman let out a soft breath of air. He made a noise like he planned to say something, but Deceit brought her finger up, tracing the lines of his throat as he swallowed. She didn’t know if he was looking at her, maybe he was going cross-eyed trying to watch her hand as her fingers met his chin, maybe he was trying very hard to look anywhere _but_ at her. She didn’t know. She didn’t look at his face, not at whatever expression he might have. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know. 

When she moved her hand to tilt his chin up, he moved too. He stood up, and Deceit’s arm nearly fell back to her side, she almost lost her nerve, lost everything she’d wanted for so long, gave it all up for pretending again. One of Roman’s hands was at the nape of her neck, the other wrapping around her waist. 

They kissed.

Deceit didn’t open her eyes when they pulled apart, she kept them closed, like if she opened them Roman would vanish in a cloud of smoke, like she would lose all of this the same way her pocket watch sunk into the floor when she didn’t want it anymore. 

“Dee, I lo-” Roman began, and Deceit shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut tighter, putting a hand over his mouth.

“Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it.”

When her hand fell away, she opened her eyes and finally looked at him. His face was flushed, his expression was hard to read, or maybe Deceit just didn’t want to read too much into it. 

“Why not?” Roman asked, and Deceit didn’t have an answer for that, not one she wanted to say out loud. 

It wasn’t hard to tell when someone was lying to her, and hence it was easy to know when someone was telling the truth. She didn’t want to hear Roman say those words, she didn’t want to know if he meant it or not. She didn’t even know which one she hoped it was. Love was a subject she kept a comfortable distance away, and for good reason.

Virgil had meant it when he’d said it, but that hadn’t lasted. Deceit had _thought_ she’d meant it when she’d said it to him, but that hadn’t lasted. There wasn’t a concrete way to know for sure whether it was the truth or not. She didn’t know if she _wanted_ it to be the truth to begin with. 

“Don’t ask that,” she finally said, and Roman frowned. She knew him well enough to know he didn’t like not knowing things. 

“I’ve already said it once, what difference does it make if I say it again?” 

Deceit sighed. “Believe me, it makes a difference.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just because _I_ know who the cute orchid boy is doesn't mean _you_ need to know who the cute orchid boy is


	14. Alone At The Pier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Just because it’s springtime, that does not mean it is ‘I’ll give you everything’ time. The blossoms on the trees may be in bloom but that don’t mean I’ll love you forevermore. And just because my heart aches, that does not mean I’m inconsolable. I’ve asked all my friends and they all tell me to run away from you, you’re no good, you never were. Just because I unplugged the jukebox and stopped listening to Ninety-Six Tears, that doesn’t mean I won’t be crying all alone at the pier._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last chapter last chapter last chapter last chapter last chapter last chapter last chapter last chapter last chapter last chapter last chapter last chapter last chapter last chapter last chapter last chapter last chapter last chapter   
> ANYWAY id like to thank the Academy, the muse Caliope, G-d and also my loving family (my dog), and most importantly vesper because its their fault i wrote this in the first place and i honestly never meant for this to be long at all, like i started writing and i didnt know shit and i continued writing not knowing shit and i didnt know until half an hour ago (when i started writing the last scene of this chapter) how it was gonna end   
> anyway enjoy and if u find a typo keep your mouth shut and pretend it isnt there because yall know ya bitch dont fuckin edit

“Why is it such a big deal?” Roman asked, and Deceit had been waiting for that question for weeks now, in fact, exactly two months, according to Roman and his meticulous timekeeping when it came to their relationship. 

Deceit smiled, and it was strained, even she couldn’t pull off a convincing lie at the moment. She folded the anniversary card back up and set it on the table along with the bouquet of flowers it’d been attached to. 

“I don’t know why I have to explain it to you, Roman, isn’t it enough for me to say it is? Why do you need an explanation?” She crossed her arms, leaning back in her chair, staring at her untouched wine glass. 

“Because I’m trying to figure out if your reasons are because you aren’t ready, or because you're afraid, or insecure, or- or any other reason that we can _work through_ if you’d just _tell me_.”

“Ro… if I thought it was something we could ‘work through’,” she used air quotes for that to further demonstrate her point of how she didn’t think they could work through it, “I would’ve told you. There’s a reason I haven’t told you.”

“And I’d like to know what that reason is.”

“Me telling you the reason I can’t tell you why I don’t want to hear… _that_ … would be the same as me telling you why I don’t want to hear _that._ ”

“How am I supposed to accept that answer, Dee? You’re my…” he paused, gesturing vaguely, “You’re my girlfriend. I want to know you’re okay, that we’re on the same page, I mean- is it because you’re afraid I’ll be lying? Do you see it as some big commitment?” 

Roman clearly had no intentions of letting this go, and Deceit usually wasn’t one to be impatient or easily irritated by his persistence, most of the time she actually found it endearing, but this time it was wearing thin. 

“Is it because of Virgil? Or because you don’t know whether or not you feel the same way? I need to know, Dee. I want to help you.”

“Christ, Roman, I don’t _need_ your help, for the last time, stay the fuck out of it.” Dee stood up, her arm smacking the wine glass as she did so, and she and Roman both paused to watch as it tipped over, wine spilling onto the hardwood, glass shattering on the floor. It was the exact same place Virgil had knocked the wine glass off the table, and Dee almost smiled at the memory, remembering his completely chaotic cat-like actions that only seemed to increase the more nervous he got. 

Roman stood up after several silent seconds, clearing his throat awkwardly. 

“Look, Dee, I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said quietly, moving around the table to put his hand on her arm.

“It’s because I’m not sure I want to believe it,” Deceit said, pulling away and crossing her arms, staring down at the wine as it slowly spread across the floor. 

“What?” 

“I don’t want to believe you when you say it. And I don’t want to _not_ believe you either.” 

“Why?” Roman asked, stepping closer to her again to reach out. This time she didn’t pull away when he put his hand on her arm. 

“I don’t know. I just… I _don’t know._ And it’s _because_ I don’t know. That’s what scares me. When Virgil told me he loved me, he wasn’t lying. When I told Virgil I loved him, I sincerely believed it at the time. But look how that turned out. How am I supposed to know what’s true and what isn’t? What am I supposed to believe?” 

“Dee, that’s the thing with emotions. They tend to… change. No one really knows how they’ll feel one day, or a year into the future, of ten years, all we know is how we feel now. And sometimes not even that. Even with your sixth lying sense, you can’t know for certain how things’ll end up. That’s how it works.” 

Dee took a deep breath, putting her hand over Roman’s. Perhaps she’d picked up Roman’s nasty habit of overthinking. She’d never been one to shy away from her feelings before; sure, she would deny them outwardly when it came to feeling sad or overly excited about something, just to keep her reputation up, but that didn’t mean anything. She always knew what she was really feeling, she prided herself on her abilities to control her emotions and do whatever she could in terms of self preservation. It was her job after all. Maybe this reluctance to hear Roman say the words _I love you_ was another way she was unconsciously trying not to get hurt, not to get so vulnerable towards anyone else. 

Or maybe she was overthinking again.

“Roman, you have to know that…” she swallowed, looking into his eyes as she spoke, hoping that would make him believe her, that he would somehow know she was telling him the truth, the way Virgil could always tell (you know, she should really stop comparing them, she ought to work on that at some point soon). “That even though I don’t want to hear you say it right now, even though I _can’t_ hear you say it right now, I do love you.”

Roman smiled, taking her hand and kissing it lightly. “I know. And I’ll give you all the time in the world until you’re ready to hear me say it back. Even if that time is never.” 

********

“Virgil?” Dee knocked more insistently on his bedroom door, fidgeting with her dress as she waited for him to answer. “Virgil, I _know_ you’re in there, will you let me in?”

She heard some shuffling of papers from inside, and something smacking into a wall or on the floor, then a suspicious thud followed by a string of curses. 

“What do you want?” He yelled, his voice sounding more high pitched than usual, signifying maximum stress.

“I need your help,” Dee called, continuing her incessant tapping on the door. “That’s what I hired you for, isn’t it?”

“ _Hiring_ implies that you’re paying me to do this,” Virgil said, his voice getting closer as he walked to the door, “which you are _not_ , and I find that to be--” he stopped upon opening the door, “--oh wow.” 

“What?” Dee’s hands went to her dress again self consciously, adjusting the ruffles and various lace elements. “Is it too much?”

Virgil blinked several times in quick succession, then stepped out of the doorway and gestured for her to come into his room. “Lord no, you look… you look fucking amazing, Dee.” 

Deceit smiled, stepping in and doing a twirl, showing off the sheer magnitude of _poof_ the dress had. It really was beautiful, she’d spent weeks planning just the design and color combination of it, and pestered Virgil endlessly over the appropriate shade of yellow that would go well with the red lace of the top of the dress, and then of course it was vital that the red lace had pink undertones because of the way it was meant to blend softly into the yellow lace skirt and Dee didn’t want it to look like dripping blood (even though Virgil had been insistent that would have been amazing, it wasn’t the theme). Then the addition of gold sparkles, embroidered roses, and a plethora of other things had to be added, and at the time, Virgil had found it all quite unnecessary. But looking at it now, he decided it had, in actuality, been completely necessary because it was _flawless._

“I need your help, Vee, you know I’m hopeless with makeup, and I can’t very well ask Roman to help me, so would you mind-?”

Virgil held up his hand, gesturing for Deceit to sit down at his desk chair. “Say no more. I’m an artist.”

“Just so long as you don’t make me look like an emo clown, I’ll be content.” Virgil stuck out his tongue at her at that, then went to work with the makeup.

Dee glanced around his room as he worked, careful not to move her head too much. 

“You know, you don’t actually have to give the speech,” she said after a few minutes of silence. “I told you that months ago.”

“It’s the least I can do,” Virgil said, his voice uncharacteristically soft, “for you.” 

“And for Roman,” Dee added, and Virgil let out a puff of air, making his bangs fly up and then fall directly down again.

“Yeah, whatever.”

Dee chuckled. “But really, Virgil. It isn’t necessary. Not if you’ll be uncomfortable.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m just… finalizing it.” He gestured vaguely at the crumpled up papers littering her desk and Deceit smiled fondly. 

“I’m sure it’ll be brilliant.”

“It’ll be a stinking hot garbage heap, but I appreciate your faith in me.” 

They stayed in silence for about another half hour, until Virgil announced his work done and gave Dee a hand mirror so she could see.

“Virgil, it’s…” she paused, running a hand across her fully visible scales, “Virgil, it’s beautiful, but… everyone who’s coming, they can’t see my scales. They need to be covered.” There was a bit of a sad lilt in her tone, and Virgil must’ve picked up on it, because he pulled the mirror out of her hand and set it down on his desk, crossing his arms.

“Dee, it’s _your_ wedding, what do you think, they’ll kick you out for having scales? They’ll just think it’s part of your makeup look. For the aesthetic. Besides, I’m not going to let you pretend to be someone you’re not on your own wedding day. That’s like, gotta be in the rules somewhere for agreeing to be a best man.” 

Dee smiled, sighing in resignation. “I guess. I’ll probably terrify the rabbi, but… you’re right.” 

“I know. I always am.”

“Shut up,” Dee leaned over to Virgil’s bed and threw a pillow at him. 

Virgil caught the pillow and held it tightly against his chest, smiling at her. “So…” he began, like he was trying to figure out what to say.

“Virgil, what if I’m making the biggest mistake of my life?” She blurted out suddenly. The question had been tumbling around in her head for the better part of three weeks now, and she still had no idea whether it was just nerves or an actual, genuine, fear.

“You’re not,” Virgil said, with the most confidence Dee had ever heard him have about anything. 

“How do you know?” 

“Because, dumbass, I’ve been around you two. You’re so in love you could see it from three miles away while looking through a kaleidoscope.” Virgil rolled his eyes, turning away to look through his scribbled on pieces of paper for the aforementioned best man speech.

“But weren’t we? You and I, I mean? Weren’t we like that at some point?” Dee asked persistently, once again fiddling with the lace on her dress. 

“No, not the way you and Roman are,” Virgil said, “but even if we were, it wouldn’t matter. We aren’t like that anymore, but with Roman, it’s different. It’s gonna last. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. And I know for a fact I never looked at you like that.”

Dee looked up at him, twinkle in her eye. “You sure dodged a bullet, huh?”

Virgil shook his head, helping her up. “Anyone would be lucky to have you, Dee. C’mon. Roman’d kill me if I made you late to your own wedding.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah fuck i cant believe ive done this*
> 
> *finished a fic in a reasonable amount of time or at all

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/kaijuvenom)  
> also i have a [tumblr](https://kaijuvenom.tumblr.com/) now.


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